In memoriam: Bernard L. Herman

We are saddened to hear of the passing of Bernard L. Herman, professor emeritus of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of American Studies, who died on December 30, 2024. Most recently, Herman had co-curated the traveling exhibition Unsettled Things: Art from an African American South, currently on view through May 4, 2025 at the International African American Museum. Its accompanying exhibition catalogue, The Unfinished Business of Unsettled Things: Art from an African American South, was published in 2022 by UNC Press.

Herman wrote and edited many books published by UNC Press over his distinguished career, including Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1760-1830, co-published with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture—recipient of the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award as the best book on North American vernacular architecture; A South You Never Ate: Savoring Flavors and Stories from the Eastern Shore of Virginia—nominee, 2020 James Beard Foundation Book Award; Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper and Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett, both accompanying traveling exhibitions organized through the Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill; and, he was the co-editor of Building the British Atlantic World: Spaces, Places, and Material Culture, 1600-1850—recipient of the 2016 Allen G. Noble Book Award.

Herman published essays on quilts, self-taught and outsider arts, foodways, historical archaeology, vernacular photography, and theoretical approaches to the study and interpretation of objects, including in the journal Southern Cultures, also published by UNC Press.

All at UNC Press offer their deepest sympathies to Bernie’s colleagues, family, and friends.