Harvey Young
Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Humanities
Professor of English and Theatre Arts, Boston University
Harvey Young is Professor of English and Theatre Arts as well a faculty affiliate in American Studies and African American & Black Diaspora Studies at Boston University. An arts advocate and a cultural critic, he has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America, NPR, CBC Radio as well as within the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune among other major news outlets.
A 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author/editor of ten books, including Theatre & Race (Bloomsbury, 2026) and Theater and Human Flourishing (Oxford, 2023). He is a former editor of Theatre Survey and currently is the editor of book series with Northwestern University Press and The University of Michigan Press. He has served as a consultant and evaluator for major arts and culture foundations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Doris Duke Foundation. In 2026, he served on the jury for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
A former Harvard and Stanford faculty fellow, he graduated with honors from Yale and holds a Ph.D. from Cornell.
As the Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, he will complete a new book project, tentatively titled Phenomenal Blackness. The project explores the curiosity, fascination, and desire for individuals to learn about and experience race through select live and mediated performances, from early 20thcentury world fairs to contemporary concerts at Coachella.