Dr. Herman joined the Delaware faculty in 1977 as a lecturer in the Department of History. He became a research associate in the then College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy (now the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration) then joined the departments of History and Art History. In 2000, he was named the Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Art History. He also served in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. In 1992, he was honored for excellence in teaching, and his name is inscribed on a brick in Mentors’ Circle.

Dr. Herman retired from UD in 2009 and moved to North Carolina, where he became the George Tindall Chair of Southern Studies in the American Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

At UD, Dr. Herman co-founded two interdisciplinary research centers: the Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD) and the Center for American Material Culture Studies CMCS). The current directors of these centers paid tribute to him:

• Chandra Reedy, professor and current director of CHAD, said, “In 1984, Bernie Herman, then a faculty member in the College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy (now the Biden School). co-founded the Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD) with David Ames. Bernie was instrumental in securing the initial grants that allowed CHAD to begin documenting and researching the historic architecture of the mid-Atlantic region, particularly buildings at risk of demolition due to urban development. His efforts included training students in architectural documentation and interdisciplinary research methods, and publishing widely, which provided a strong foundation for CHAD's ongoing work. I enjoyed brainstorming with Bernie because his brilliant mind could quickly identify key issues and propose innovative solutions. Colleagues from his time at the college describe him as a valued member known for his creative mind and compassionate heart and remember him as an exceptional practitioner and true scholar who contributed much to the campus and to the wider community.”
• Carla Guerrón Montero, professor of anthropology and current director of CMCS, said, “The Center for Material Culture Studies will be forever indebted to the visionary and innovative spirit of Bernie Herman. An internationally renowned scholar of material culture studies, vernacular architecture, outsider art and southern foodways, he was the architect in the creation of CMCS and its founding director. He was deeply devoted to graduate students and finding ways to support their endeavors. Thanks to his efforts, the CMCS has advanced material culture theory and practice since 2000 through a robust slate of interdisciplinary conferences, funding opportunities and educational programs that have enhanced the training of hundreds of graduate students from the departments of Africana Studies, Art and Design, Art Conservation, Art History, English, Fashion and Apparel Studies, History and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, among others. His leadership and signature joviality will be sorely missed.”

Colleagues remember

Many of Dr. Herman’s colleagues, friends and former students shared their memories.

‘vast intellectual curiosity and gleeful adventurousness’

Wendy Bellion, associate dean for the humanities, College of Arts and Sciences,
professor and Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art History: “It’s hard to overstate Bernie’s influence on the field of material culture studies, including his leadership of the College of Arts and Sciences’s Center for Material Culture Studies, which he helped establish in 2000. His vast intellectual curiosity and gleeful adventurousness infused every aspect of his teaching and scholarship, and deeply inspired his faculty colleagues as well as generations of students at UD across multiple programs, including art history, history and the Winterthur Program in Material Culture Studies.” 

‘funny, irreverent and iconoclastic’

Margaret Stetz, Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women's Studies:  "Without Bernie Herman's drive, vision, energy and expertise, would Material Culture Studies ever have gotten off the ground at UD? He was a serious scholar of so-called ‘outsider art,’  especially when it came to his groundbreaking work on the African American women quiltmakers of Gee's Bend, Alabama. But he was also a full-fledged (and very self-aware) character--funny, irreverent and iconoclastic. He made people laugh, while pushing them relentlessly to do their best and to think in innovative and productive ways."

‘connecting the city of Newark to the Black community’

Ray Nichols, retired professor of art and design:  “I had lots of opportunities to work with Bernie at the University. Two such moments were working through the Center for American Material Culture studies on two books connecting the city of Newark to the Black community along New London Road. With Bernie, I and a dozen visual communication students produced the book in 2005 entitled, People Were Close. The 108-page book tells the story of the African-American community in Newark bounded by New London Road from the train tracks north to Clayton Hall, including Rose, Ray, Corbit and Mill streets. The visual highlight of the book is a 2 inch x 80 foot photographic panorama of multiple-angle views of every building along the included streets that runs along the bottoms of the pages. This area, home to the African-American community, was essentially leveled in 2018 and rebuilt as student apartments. The second book highlighted recipes from the New London Road community.”

‘a dedicated teacher whose lectures inspired’

Anne Bowler, associate professor of sociology and criminal justice: “Bernie Herman was an extraordinary individual—a brilliant scholar whose work challenged conventional disciplinary categories, a dedicated teacher whose lectures and seminars inspired decades of undergraduate and graduate students, a supportive colleague who always found time to listen and offer encouragement, and a beloved mentor. Perhaps my fondest memories involve the guest lectures he was generous enough to give every time I taught my sociology of art seminar, wherein he presented work from his ongoing research on the quilt artists of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. Semester after semester, students sat riveted in their seats to the very end of class, eager to soak up every image and word. I was also fortunate to be able to call Bernie a friend and will always remember how much richer the world seemed after our conversations.” 

‘a gift for engaging students, communities and colleagues’

Deborah Andrews, professor emerita of English: “To have a drink, a meal or a snack with Bernie was to enter an incredible conversation about what he saw as the ‘poetics of everyday life and things.’ He drew attention to a new dimension of material culture—’outsider art,’ quilts and, especially, foodways—whose makers had been mostly overlooked, their voices unheard, in academe and museums. He was iconoclastic, smart and funny, with a gift for engaging students, communities and colleagues like me in his passion. An example, along with so many others, is Food always brings people together, a handsome oral and pictorial history of Newark’s New London Road community coordinated by the CMCS under Bernie’s direction and published by UD’s Raven Press in 2006. It includes home-grown recipes and reminiscences that Bernie and his students captured as they walked with, listened to and ate among people there. It celebrates the community and resonates with the engaging sound of their voices. Bernie’s role is suggested only in a modest note on the last page thanking those ‘who shared their tables and their memories.’  The title, too, quotes a community member. With envious energy and generosity, Bernie enriched the lives of anyone lucky enough to be around him. I am deeply grateful that I was among the lucky.” 

‘a rare mentor’

Cara Zimmerman, head of Americana and Outsider Art, Christie’s, New York City:  “My first conversation with Bernie, when I arrived at his Old College office as a grad school applicant, was everything I didn’t expect. He introduced himself, I sat down nervously, and he asked, pointedly, after a pause: ‘what do you think of Harry Potter?’ From there, conversation about Voldemort (and somehow also Buffy the Vampire Slayer) flowed.

"I was lucky to experience many more years of Bernie questions and explorations, from mapping a dilapidated, historically significant building during a frigid winter to navigating Birmingham, Alabama, in a large van on route to Joe Minter’s African Village in America. Bernie had a remarkable ability to make any project engaging and to find intriguing ideas from everything around him. As was evident in our first meeting, Bernie wasn’t tethered by conventional confines of ‘Art’ or high/low aesthetics—a freedom that made his lectures, writings and teaching electric with possibilities.

"Bernie was a rare mentor. Generous of spirit, he often asked graduate students past and present to collaborate on his publications, the range of which—from Vernacular Architecture, to Southern foodways, to Outsider Art—reflected the remarkable breadth of his interests and intellect. I had the privilege to write a chapter in his Thornton Dial: Thoughts on Paper. Bernie inscribed my copy, ‘You get to do too many wonderful things – so do more!’ Every one of Bernie’s students gets to do wonderful things thanks to his mentorship, support and enthusiasm for our many paths in and around the art world. We will endeavor to do more.”

‘a model for me of what a scholar can achieve’

Jennifer Van Horn, professor of art history and history and director of graduate studies, UD Department of Art History: “I had the pleasure of knowing Bernie both when I was an undergraduate student in the art history department (he served as the second reader for my undergraduate honors thesis) and when I was a MA student in the Winterthur American Material Culture MA program; Bernie was my graduate adviser and directed my MA thesis and also taught two graduate seminars that I enrolled in.

"Most important, Bernie was a model for me of what a scholar can achieve and how to ethically position writing history in terms of the care he showed for the communities around him and for those whose lives his scholarship touched. Bernie’s boundless energy and curiosity were catching—he inexorably pulled his students, just like his readers, into the puzzles of vernacular architecture. Sometimes that meant reading densely theoretical works. Sometimes that meant venturing into dusty attics or damp dark basements. Memorably for myself and some of my classmates that meant us being locked into a courtyard while looking at a Philadelphia federal-era townhouse and having to wait for the homeowners to return from work in order to get let out! 

"Bernie inspired me to always keep people in mind—not to forget that people made the material things that I was studying—and that those people, just like the people of today, had their own loves and hurts, ideals and shortcomings. Bernie took my writing seriously and never let me settle for an easy answer or an infelicitous sentence—I don’t think he would have let me use infelicitous in that sentence! He assumed that I had something important to say, which is typical of the respect that he showed everyone around him. Yet more than that, Bernie also insisted that scholarship should be fun and rewarding. I well remember his booming laugh and the joy that he took in discovering and sharing the funny and the ridiculous.

"I have the honor of now teaching in the art history department and, as it happens, my office was Bernie’s when I was a student here. As I sit in my office, now on the other side of the desk so to speak, I often think about Bernie's example of scholarship and mentorship and hope that we at UD can continue to further his legacy of ethical, rigorous, creative, and just plain fun material culture study.

"Beyond his scholarly achievements, I would also note his importance for creating an institutional structure that supports material culture studies at UD through his role in the founding of the Center for Material Studies—which is fundamental for creating community and for supporting material culture research for both students and faculty on campus. I also would highlight his work (together with students) conducting oral history interviews with members of the New London Road community back in 2004-2006. Bernie’s work started to document the important stories and connections of this predominantly African American community in Newark. As he so often did, Bernie anticipated the important work now being undertaken by the University of Delaware Anti-Racism Initiative and Bernie, with others, helped to lay the groundwork for community partnerships that have recently helped to spur and support UD’s entrance into the Universities Studying Slavery consortium, as well as vital research on UD’s and Newark’s past and public history projects such as the Black Histories at University of Delaware: An Interactive UDARI StoryMap. I think Bernie would be tremendously pleased by these legacies.

"I am proud to be among the ranks of the many many folks from Newark whose lives Bernie touched. And I am sure that there will be no shortage of stories about Bernie walking his dog down Main Street and around campus and engaging (it seemed) every passerby in conversation. Bernie famously liked to claim that walking his dog is what earned him full professor given the many people who talked to him on those walks including the late President Roselle. Though of course it was his many many other accomplishments! But it was on one of his dog walks that he (in typical Bernie fashion) took the time to assure me, then an anxious MA student awaiting word of Ph.D. program acceptances, that I not only had a future in material culture study but with that future came a duty to contribute something to the field that I Ioved and to make it even better. I continue to take that charge to heart.”