Eric Solomon is Instructor of English and Southern Studies. He has also served as Assistant/Associate Editor of The Global South.
Research Interests
- Twenty-Twenty First-Century US Literature
- Southern Literature
- New Southern Studies
- African American Literature
- Caribbean Literature
- American Studies
- Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Queer and Feminist Theory
- Blue Humanities/ Environmental Humanities
- Law and Literature
- Health Humanities
Biography
Dr. Solomon is an interdisciplinary scholar and cultural historian of the circum-Caribbean south (Anglophone/Hispanophone) with special emphasis on the study of gender and sexuality across southern spaces. He holds a Ph.D. from Emory University (2017) and a B.A. in English and Spanish from the University of Mississippi Honors College (2009). Since 2018, he has served as editor of the “Queer Intersections” series with the open-access journal Southern Spaces.
His work has been featured in Southern Cultures, Southern Spaces, south, South Atlantic Review, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Mississippi Quarterly, the North Carolina Literary Review, among others. He has served as project manager of the TUOR Project (a digital story tour of sites important to Atlanta’s queer history) and as a cultural historian for the City of Atlanta's Mayoral LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee. He is originally from Leland, Mississippi, birthplace of Kermit the Frog.
(Selected)
“Dream States, Liminal Spaces, Renovating Relations: The Queerness of Home in Carter Sickels’s The Prettiest Star,” A New American Vein: Critical Essays on Contemporary Appalachian Literature (Nicole Drewitz-Crockett and Zackary Vernon, editors) (Athens: Ohio University Press, forthcoming 2027).
“‘Key Travelers’ of ‘the Rustic Scene’: Carl Wittman and Allan Troxler,” North Carolina Literary Review, special issue on North Carolina LGBTQ+ Literature edited by Dwight Tanner (2025): 6–29.
Co-authored with Joshua Jacobs, “The Queering of Atlanta: A Roundtable Conversation,” Southern Cultures 31, no. 1, “Queer South” special issue edited by Jaime Harker and Hooper Schutlz (2025).
“Miguel, Mississippi,” Southern Cultures 30, no. 3, “Home” special issue (2024).
In Conversation with Jericho Brown, “The Poetics of Rescue and Resilience: A Conversation with Jericho Brown on The Selected Shepherd,” Southern Spaces, November 11, 2024.
“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, 55, no. 1 & 2 (2022): 45–66.
“Trajectories: Queer Studies (Spotlight author: Randall Kenan).” In Companion to Literature of the U.S. South, edited by Monica Miller, Katharine Burnett, and Todd Hagstette. Routledge, 2022.
“Queer Straits: ‘Far from Normal’ at the Southernmost,” South Atlantic Review 87, no. 3, Special Issue: Post Normative? (2022): 30–50.
“‘The Design is Fugal’: The Many Voices and the Long Decade Composing Clock Without Hands.” In Understanding the Short Fiction of Carson McCullers, edited by Alison Graham Bertolini and Casey Kayser. Mercer University Press, 2020.
“The ‘Vintage’ Faulkner: Imagining Futurity in the Degenerate South of Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” Mississippi Quarterly 70/71, no. 3 (2017/2018): 295–317.
Editing and Public Scholarship
Series Editor, “Queer Intersections,” Southern Spaces (2018–), https://southernspaces.org/series/queer-intersections-southern-spaces/
“‘There is Light Again!’: Reflections on the Mississippi ice storms of 1994 and 2026 and the infrastructure of care,” Mississippi Today, February 13, 2026, https://mississippitoday.org/2026/02/13/ice-storm-mississippi-1994-2026-there-is-light/.
“Jericho Brown,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, June 12, 2025,
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/jericho-brown
“Olympics Out of Cobb,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, January 9, 2025, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/olympics-out-of-cobb/
“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 10, 2022.
Courses Taught
- ENGL 2224 Survey of American Literature Since 1865
- ENGL 3540 Survey of Southern Literature
- ENGL 3670 The Blues Tradition in American Literature
- ENGL 3801 Introduction to Health Humanities
- ENGL 5540 Southern Studies Graduate Seminar
- SSTU 1010 Introduction to Southern Studies
- SSTU 1070 Gender and Sexuality in the US South
- SSTU 4010 Law, Literature, Love
Education
Ph.D. English, Emory University (2017)
B.A. English, University of Mississippi (2009)
Ph.D. English, Emory University
Bachelor's English, The University of Mississippi
Recognitions
- 2026 Cora Lee Graham Award for Outstanding Teaching of First Year Students, College of Liberal Arts, University of Mississippi, 2026
- 2026-27 Isom Center Fellow, Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, University of Mississippi, 2026-2027