Biography:

Sherita L. Johnson is the Director of the College of Liberal Arts’ Africana Research Center (ARC) and an Associate Professor of English. In collaboration with Penn State’s Center for Black Digital Research (CBDR) and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Prof. Johnson is a 2024-2025 Just Transformations Commonwealth Faculty Fellow and was a 2023-2024 Just Transformations Mellon Satellite Partner.

With a concentration on nineteenth-century African American literature and print culture, her work is grounded by archival research that illuminates extraordinary experiences of Black writers, activists, and public intellectuals. Examining the life and writings of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, tracking Frederick Douglass in the colored conventions movement, and investigating African American experiences during Reconstruction are current projects that inform her teaching to broaden critical perspectives of race, U.S. regionalism, and Black organizing in nineteenth century studies.