Herman Beavers

Herman Beavers is the Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President’s Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds dual appointments in the Department of English and the Department of Africana Studies within the School of Arts & Sciences. His scholarly work bridges literary analysis with interdisciplinary themes, including jazz studies and the intersections of science/medicine with literature.

Research interests focus on 20th-century African American literature, poetry, gender studies, and the interplay between science and narrative forms. He has published extensively, including the forthcoming monograph Geography and the Political Imaginary in the Novels of Toni Morrison (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and the chapbook Obsidian Blues (Agape Editions, 2017). His poems appear in Cleaver Magazine and American Arts Quarterly, and have been anthologized in Obsession: Sestinas for the Twenty-First Century.

Beavers serves on editorial boards for The African American Review, The Black Scholar, and Modern Fiction Studies. His work emphasizes transformative pedagogy in both creative writing and critical theory.