Eric Ashley Hairston, associate professor of English and director of the Center for Law and Humanities, recently lectured at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities on his continuing research into the interdisciplinary connection between classical studies and African American literature. His first book on the subject was recently named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title.
Eric Ashley Hairston, associate professor of English and director of the Center for Law and Humanities, gave a Fellows lecture at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in Charlottesville, VA on April 28.
Hairston was selected as a 2014-15 Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Fellow and has spent the spring in residence at VFH. Open to scholars and writers in the humanities, VFH fellowships are awarded annually for recipients to pursue projects with the support of a stipend, offices at the VFH, access to University of Virginia libraries and resources and UVA faculty status. Fellows present regularly on the topics of their research and have the opportunity to participate in the many programs of the VFH, including the Virginia Festival of the Book and the radio program With Good Reason.
Hairston presented his research findings on classical influences on African American literature, which he is conducting for his book project The Shadow of Olympus. The volume will examine the continuing influence of the works of antiquity on African American writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. The project demonstrates that modern and contemporary black writers have continued a nuanced, multigenerational intellectual engagement with the classics, crafting complex cosmopolitan, global and multicultural positions, while working within the historic American racial context.
In January, Hairston’s most recent publication, The Ebony Column: Classics, Civilization and the African American Reclamation of the West (University of Tennessee Press, 2013), which inaugurated the Classicism in American Culture Series at UT Press, was named a Choice: Outstanding Academic Title. Publications selected for the distinction reflect overall excellence in presentation and scholarship, importance relative to other literature in the field, distinction as a first treatment of a given subject in book or electronic form, originality or uniqueness of treatment, value to undergraduate students and importance in building undergraduate library collections.