Herman Beavers, Professor of English and Africana Studies, has been appointed 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.