Harvey Young Awarded Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
CFA dean will step down from the role July 1 and take a yearlong sabbatical to work on a book project supported by the fellowship, then return to the CFA faculty
Photo by Doug Levy
Harvey Young Awarded Prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship
CFA dean will step down from the role July 1 and take a yearlong sabbatical to work on a book project supported by the fellowship, then return to the CFA faculty
This article was originally published in BU Today on April 23, 2026. By Molly Glass
EXCERPT
What do the early 20th-century World’s Fairs have in common with the concerts that studded Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour 100 years later? Both were big, popular entertainment events that drew enormous, diverse crowds. And both offered windows into the exploration of culture and race for people with an intrinsic curiosity about others, says Harvey Young, dean of the College of Fine Arts (CFA).
“There’s an inherent curiosity and fascination and sincere interest in other people, other groups, other cultures,” says Young, who holds appointments as professor of English, theatre arts, American studies, and African American and Black diaspora studies at Boston University. Young announced earlier this year that he would step down as dean at the end of the spring semester, but will return to the faculty at CFA after a sabbatical.
“I’m interested in exploring the curiosity, fascination, and desire for individuals to learn about and experience race through select live and mediated performances,” Young says. His thesis, which is the subject of a forthcoming book 13 years in the making, “argues that Blackness, as an idea, and Black folk, as individuals, proved sufficiently alluring, attractive, and inspiring across the 20th century that ideas of community and interpersonal relationships were premised on them,” he says.
Young’s exploration of this subject is also, in part, what earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, a prestigious grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
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Building an Arts-Rich BU, in a New Role
Young’s research, supported by the Guggenheim Fellowship, will run concurrently with a sabbatical he had already planned to take at the end of the academic year. He announced earlier this year that he would be stepping down as dean at the end of the spring semester, with plans to return to CFA as a faculty member after his yearlong sabbatical.
In the meantime, Young, who was appointed inaugural and interim vice president for the arts in the fall, will continue on in that role throughout his sabbatical and until a permanent vice president is named.
Serving as dean of the College of Fine Arts has been a privilege, and I am deeply grateful to the faculty, staff, students, and alumni whose creativity and commitment define this college.
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Office for the Arts
To some extent, Young’s next chapter has already begun. As inaugural vice president for the arts, Young helped establish BU’s new Office for the Arts, a hub for developing and celebrating the arts at BU. The office supports University-wide programs that advance community-building through the arts, encourage interdisciplinary arts teaching and research, and highlight diverse artists and forms of artistry.
“I am excited about expanding access to the arts at a scale unprecedented for a university. We have a visionary president in Dr. Gilliam,” Young says. “In addition, Kenneth Feld (Questrom’70), one of the world’s most admired business leaders, and I are cochairing an extraordinary international task force of accomplished, prominent thought leaders with experience making change at the scale of a city. There is so much potential to be realized.” (Feld is a former chair of Boston University’s Board of Trustees.)
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Leading CFA to New Heights
As dean of CFA, Young led the college to new heights. Since his appointment in 2018, CFA’s schools—the School of Visual Arts, the School of Music, and the School of Theatre—have risen in national recognition, with the School of Visual Arts climbing 20 spots in U.S. News & World Report’s graduate rankings and the School of Theatre being recognized by Playbill as a leading producer of Broadway creative teams.
Young also spearheaded a comprehensive curricular redesign within the college, launched new BA and MFA programs, improved the delivery of essential academic support for students, and expanded the reach of CFA’s public programs to ensure greater accessibility of the arts within BU and the broader Boston community. He also oversaw more than $110 million in facility improvements at CFA.