Herman Beavers

Herman Beavers, Professor of English and Africana Studies, is the Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President’s Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies. Beavers is a distinguished poet and a widely published scholar of 20th-century American and African American literature, especially the novels of Toni Morrison, the traditions of jazz and jazz writing, and the work of 20th-century Southern writers. His chapbook, Obsidian Blues (Agape Editions) was published in 2018 and a second chapbook, The Vernell Poems (Moonstone Press) was published in 2019. His latest monograph, Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison was published in 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Beavers received the School of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Award for Mentoring Undergraduate Research in 2017, and he has served in many roles at Penn, including graduate and undergraduate chair of Africana Studies and director of the English Department Honors Program. He was recently appointed as faculty director of Civic House and the Civic Scholars Program.