Professor Herman is Chair and Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Art History. A recipient of the University’s Excellence in Teaching Award, he offers courses in material culture, vernacular architecture, visual culture, folk and ethnic arts, historic preservation, and critical approaches to the history and interpretation of objects. His books include Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1780-1830 (2005) Everyday Architecture of The Mid-Atlantic (1997) with Gabrielle M. Lanier, The Stolen House (1992), A Land and Life Remembered: Americo-Liberian Folk Architecture (1989) with Svend Holsoe and Max Belcher, and Architecture and Rural Life in Central Delaware, 1700-1900 (1987). He is a three-time recipient of the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award given by the Vernacular Architecture Forum for the best book on the traditional buildings of North America. He has written on the art of Thornton Dial, Charles Benefield, and Martin Ramirez. His essay on the architecture of a community of Alabama African-American quilts appeared in The Architecture of Gee’s Bend Quilts 2006. In 2005 and 2006 he worked with students in senior writing seminars, compiling, designing, and producing People Were Close, an oral and photographic history of Newark, Delaware’s historic African-American community and Food Always Brings People Together: Recipes, Poems, and Stories from the New London Road Community. Currently Dr. Herman is developing a collection of essays on the critical relationships between objects, images, and narratives with a particular emphasis on contemporary quilts. He has consulted on a variety of historic sites in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom developing new interpretive approaches. He also serves on a number of editorial boards including the Journal of Modern Craft and Material Culture Review. Dr. Herman is cofounder and senior research fellow in the University's Center for Historic Architecture and Design, an interdisciplinary research center supporting public service and student research in historic preservation. He served as the first director of the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. Professor Herman, who also serves on the faculty of the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, Department of History, and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, strives to integrate teaching, research, and public service in the study, interpretation, and preservation of traditional arts and architecture.

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