Eric Ashley Hairston is an Associate Professor of English and of Law and Humanities. He is also the founding director of the Center for Law and Humanities.  He regularly teaches undergraduate courses in American Literature, African-American Literature, Classical Literature, Law and Literature, Asian American Literature, and Southern Literature.  He has also taught courses in the Western Literary tradition and Children's Literature.   At the graduate and professional level, he also teaches Law and Humanities at the Elon University School of Law.  Dr. Hairston's research areas include intersections of Classical Literature and American Literature, especially classical influences on African American and Southern writers, as well as the interdisciplinary study of law, literature, and the humanities. 

Dr. Hairston has regularly presented his work at professional conferences, including the American Comparative Literature Association, The British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Annual Conference at Oxford University, The Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities, and the Modern Language Association.  He has also served as a panelist and commentator on issues of law, politics, and policy.  Dr. Hairston's most recent work on Classics, the Western Tradition, and African American Literature appears in New Essays On Phillis Wheatley, edited by Dr. John C. Shields.  His recent work in law and policy will appear in the forthcoming The Social History of Crime and Punishment in America.  A book, The Ebony Column:  Classics, Civilization, and the African American Reclamation of the West is in under contract and forthcoming as the first book in the Classicism in American Culture Series, published by the University of Tennessee Press and edited by Dr. John C. Shields of Illinois State University  http://aeneas.illinoisstate.edu/announcements/index.shtml).  His next research projects in African-American Literature and Law and Humanities will explore the slave narrative tradition, detail further considerations of classical influences on African-American Literature, and examine the challenges and opportunities for traditional American legal principles posed by western and global humanities traditions.     

Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Virginia.

J.D., University of North Carolina School of Law.

M.A., English Language and Literature, University of Virginia.

B.A., English and Politics, Wake Forest University.

African American Literature to 1945, African American Novels, American Literature Survey, Asian-American Literature, Classical Literature, Faulkner, Forget the Lawyers, Kill the Novelists (new GST seminar), Law and Literature, Harlem Renaissance, Law Literature, and Humanities (School of Law)