Dr. P. Gabrielle Foreman

P. Gabrielle Foreman is a poet's daughter who hails from the South Side of Chicago and Venice, California. She is the founding faculty director of the award-winning Colored Conventions Project and a founding co-director of the Center for Black Digital Research/#DigBlk at Penn State University. Foreman is known for her long-standing commitment to working in collectives and to institution and community building. Like the Colored Conventions Project, #DigBlk is made up of graduate student leaders, librarians, satellite faculty, and arts and community partners who bring the scattered history of early Black organizing to digital life in a single, open-source collection and through digital exhibits. For a decade, Foreman has also been part of a trio that engages choreographers, poets, student researchers, and visual artists to bring early Black history to the stage. Foreman is known for essays that challenge disciplinary and institutional orthodoxies. She is author of five books and editions, most recently, The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter: Art and Poetry for David Drake. Foreman is Professor of English, African American Studies, and History, and she holds the Paterno Family Chair of Liberal Arts at Penn State University. She is also a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.