Herman Beavers

Randy Martin Spirit Award 2022-2023

Professor Herman Beavers is a scholar of African American literature and history, a poet, jazz musician, and leader in community engagement among Penn faculty. His scholarship, pedagogy, and artistry are thoroughly intertwined. Through his academically based community service course, “August Wilson & Beyond,” he engages a deliberately multigenerational group from teenagers through elders. He leads the course with knowledge of history, politics, arts movements, and literary theory, while creating the space for students of all ages to share perspectives that result in more complex understandings of Wilson’s plays. His pedagogy leads to what one elder class member described as, “an evocative theatrical experience that invites the community at large to discuss, reflect, share, and grow.”

Through the many courses Dr. Beavers teaches, he mentors students to turn an analytical eye on their own conclusions. He complicates their literary observations, not allowing them to settle for isolated thinking. His attentive questioning leads students to deepen their own curiosity. Beavers deftly guides students through the often-unfamiliar process of applying research to artistry, in which writing in a character’s voice requires rigorous digging into the conditions of that character’s world.

Beavers’ institutional leadership is exemplified by his role as Faculty Director of Penn’s Civic House & Civic Scholars program. Legendary Philadelphia jazz saxophonist Odean Pope recently sought out Beavers to compose a poem for Pope to set to music in a collaboration supported by Ars Nova. Sincerity and joy in collaboration, inquiry, and creative production are common threads in all his work.