Eric Solomon
Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies and English
Eric Solomon is Visiting Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Oxford College. He received his PhD in English from Emory and his BA in English and Spanish from the University of Mississippi. He is working on his first book, Queer Straits: Desire Lines at the Southernmost, a cultural history of Key West in the queer imagination. He has published in Atlanta Studies, Southern Spaces, south, South Atlantic Review, Pop Matters, and Mississippi Quarterly and serves as the editor of the "Queer Intersections" series with the journal Southern Spaces. He is the project manager of The #TUOR Project, a digital story tour of queer historical sites in Atlanta's built environment. He also serves as secretary and board member of Historic Atlanta, an organization committed to social justice through preservation. Eric is originally from Leland, Mississippi, birthplace of Kermit the Frog.
Education
PhD| Emory University| 2017
BA| University of Mississippi| 2009
Courses Taught
Oxford College, Emory University, American Studies 201QW, “American Intersections”
Oxford College, Emory University, American Studies 385W: Special Topics, "Queer Intersections"
Oxford College, Emory University, English 389R: The Fire This Time: James Baldwin's "America"
Oxford College, Emory University, English 185, “Why iWrite: Identity and Intersectionality”
Oxford College, Emory University, English 185, “Reading and Writing the Intersections”
Emory University, Film 208, Digital Media and Culture, "#dmcult: Are you a Gadget?"
Emory University, English 210W, Major Authors, “Southern Currents”
Emory University, English 181, Writing about Literature, “Southlandia!”
Emory University, English 101, Expository Writing, “Memorial Cultures; Bop It: Practicing Memory, Telling Stories”
Accomplishments
- [2021] Faculty Development Grant, Queer Straits: Desire Lines from the Southernmost, Oxford College, Emory University
- [2020–2021] Georgia Humanities Digital Initiatives Grant, Mapping Queer Atlanta History: Touch Up Your Roots with the LGBTQ+ Digital Story Tour, Partnership with Dave Hayward, Founder and Coordinator, Touching Up Our Roots: Georgia’s LGBTQ+ Story Project
- [2020] Arts and Social Justice Program, Emory University, Limited Partnership with Artist and Activist Sierra King
- [2020] Chesnut LGBT Person of the Year Award, Emory Pride Awards, Emory University
- [2020] Gabriele Stauf Residency Award, Lillian E. Smith Center
- [2018] Don Kelly Research Collection Fellowship, Texas A&M University Libraries, Cushing Memorial Library and Archives
- [2016–2017] Scholarly Inquiry and Research at Emory Fellowship, Emory University
- [2011–2017] Laney Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Fellowship, Emory University
Publications
Books
Queer Straits: Desire Lines at the Southernmost (manuscript in preparation)
Book Chapter
“Trajectories: Queer Studies (Spotlight author: Randall Kenan),” Companion to Literature of the U.S. South (Monica Miller, Katharine Burnett, and Todd Hagstette, editors) (London: Routledge, 2022)
“The Design is Fugal”: the Many Voices and the Long Decade Composing Clock Without Hands,” In Understanding the Short Fiction of Carson McCullers (Alison Graham Bertolini and Casey Kayser, editors) (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2020)
Peer Reviewed Articles
“Queer Straits: ‘Far from Normal’ at the Southernmost,” South Atlantic Review, Special Issue: Post Normative? [forthcoming]
“The ‘Resumed Contact’ of Fellow Passengers: Queer Resurgens in the Lives and Works of Donald Windham and Tennessee Williams,” Studies in the Literary Imagination, Special Issue on the Literature of Atlanta [forthcoming]
"Boys Erased and the Trouble with Coaching: Confronting Male-Male Sexual Violence in the Age of #MeToo," south, Special Issue: Quaring Childhood (Forthcoming Fall 2019)
“The ‘Vintage’ Faulkner: Imagining Futurity in the Degenerate South of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” Mississippi Quarterly 70/71.3
“Wanted eLove: Queer Square Spaces and the Revolution in Digital Intimacy,” Southern Spaces (Forthcoming, in layout)
Edited Works
"Queer Intersections / Southern Spaces," Southern Spaces series, May 10, 2018–present
Manuscript Editor, Water Graves by Valérie Loichot
Review Essays
“Once Upon a Time in Atlanta: Staging Revolution from the Gay Bar,” a review of A Night at the Sweet Gum Head by Martin Padgett, Atlanta Studies, August 20, 2022
“Is there Life Beyond the Pop Lifecycle for Christina Aguilera?,” Pop Matters, July 30, 2018
“Hyphenating Waters: A Review of Calypso Magnolia and Island People,” Southern Spaces, March 12, 2018
Loving-Moonlight(ing): Cinema in the Breach,” Southern Spaces, April 26, 2017
Blog Posts and Public Scholarship
Eric Solomon and Forrest Lawson, “The Room that We’re Able to Take Up: Forrest Lawson’s Queer Aesthetic,” Southern Spaces, August 25, 2020
Eric Solomon, “Tear Gas and the Scripture (6-1-2020),” Collage in Jesse P. Karlsberg, “To the White People of America (1854),” Southern Spaces, June 30, 2020
John Howard, Eric Solomon, Sophia Leonard, and Allen Tullos, “The Joneses: Homemade in Mississippi,” Southern Spaces, February 14, 2020
“Beyond Fairyland: Writing and Curating Queer Miami,” interview with Julio Capó Jr., Southern Spaces, November 14, 2019
“Love and Death in Mississippi,” Southern Spaces, August 16, 2018
“Queer Memory: Martyrs, Loss, and Memorialization in Southern Florida,” Southern Spaces, August 11, 2016
“Remnants of Flannery,” Southern Spaces, October 7, 2014
“Opening Spaces: On Tolerance and the Possibility for Love,” Southern Spaces, February 24, 2014
Presentations
“Touching Up Our Roots with #TUOR: Atlanta's Queer Digital Story Tour,” Queer History South, Dallas, Texas, September 30, 2022.
“The ‘Resumed Contact’ of Fellow Passengers: Queer Resurgens in the Lives and Works of Donald Windham and Tennessee Williams,” Roundtable on the Literature of Atlanta, Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Atlanta, Georgia, June 28, 2022.
“Public Queer History in Atlanta, Then and Now,” Queer History Conference, Committee on LGBT History, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, June 14, 2022.
“Welcome to ‘Fag City’: Queer Fallout and Improvised Lifelines in the Slipstream,” Bodies of Water: The Coastal South and the Caribbean, Modern Language Association, Washington D.C., January 6, 2022.
“‘I Like Me’ and the ‘Usual Lines’: Current States of Quare Desire,” Quare Souths roundtable, Modern Language Association, Virtual Conference, January 10, 2021.
"Uncredited Lost Companions: The Inheritance of Leading Men," Persistent Narratives: Queer Performances between the Past and the Future panel, Modern Language Association, Virtual Conference, January 9, 2021.
"Had Allan Lived: the Sons of Tennessee Williams in the New-Queer South," Are We in a New Southern Literary Renaissance? Panel, Modern Language Association, Washington State Convention Center and the Sheraton Grand Seattle, Seattle, Washington, January 11, 2020.
"'A Tad too Perverse’: The Intersection of Poor-Southern-Queer in Higher Education," Modern Language Association, Washington State Convention Center and the Sheraton Grand Seattle, Seattle, Washington, January 11, 2020.
“The Weather in Morrison and a Shareable World: A Meditation in Times of Peril,” Toni Morrison Tribute Panel, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta, Georgia, November 16, 2019.
"In the Queue: Reinaldo Arenas and the Quest for the Ineffable," Queer Studies Panel, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta, Georgia, November 15, 2019.
"Becoming Q: Using Queer as an Analytical Frame through which to Rethink and Resist Academic Norms," Southern Studies Outside the Academy Roundtable, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Westin Peachtree Plaza, Atlanta, Georgia, November 15, 2019.
“Wanted Love: Queer Square Spaces and the Revolution in Digital Intimacy,” Southeastern American Studies Association, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, March 15, 2019.
"Boys Erased and the Trouble with Coaching: Confronting Male-Male Sexual Violence in the Age of #MeToo," Southeastern Women's Studies Association, Sara Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, March 8, 2019.
“Tennessee Williams After Dark: Lost Companions and Queering Grief on the Public Stage,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Queering the US South Panel, Sheraton Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, November 2, 2018.
“Serially Southernmost: A Gay Key West Canticle,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Serializing the US South Panel, Sheraton Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, November 3, 2018.
“The ‘S’ Word: thoughts on the Crooked Letter from a Native Son,” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Insufferable Souths Roundtable, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, February 16, 2018.
“GILLS and Currents: (Digital) Pedagogy in the Literature Classroom,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association, Trojan Horse Pedagogy Panel, Hyatt Regency, Jacksonville, Florida, November 4, 2016.
“Homophilia and the Homophile in Carson McCullers’s Clock Without Hands,” American Literature Association Annual Conference, Carson McCullers Society Panel, Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, California, May 27, 2016.
“The ‘Vintage’ Faulkner: Imagining Futurity in the Degenerate South of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, February 12, 2016.
“‘Not-Yet Conscious, Forward Dawning’: In Love with the Night Mysterious or Queerness at the Horizon,” Southeastern American Studies Association Conference, College of Charleston, Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, February 1, 2013.
“The Immemorial Current, the Orphic Will to Rescue, and the Inextinguishable in George Platt Lynes and Reginald Shepherd,” Studies in Sexualities Conference, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, January 25, 2013.
“Bare, Buried, Bearing (Away) the Body: The Ethical Beside and the (Post)Memory of AIDS,” Studies in Sexualities Conference, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, January, 27, 2012.
“Does It Get Better?: Sudden Piercing Knowledge, Examinations of Male Childhood Sexual Abuse and the Post-Trauma Moment Formation of the Self,” Louisiana State University Mardi Gras Conference, Echoes of Trauma Theme, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 2011.