Teaching Institution: Elon University, Elon, North Carolina

Field of Study: English/Law and Humanities 

From Harlem to Hurston

My current Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Fellowship project is a second book building on my examination of the influence of works of antiquity on African-American writers. This time, I am looking at works from the Harlem Renaissance through the contemporary period. This includes new examinations of writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and Percival Everett.

Dr. Hairston mentors a variety of undergraduate students and helps develop them as serious researchers with a broad view of discipline-based essentials, interdisciplinary flexibility and intercultural competency. He credits the DSP with giving him the freedom to develop the roots of his own interdisciplinary research, which led to him founding the Elon University Center for Law and Humanities, and an award-winning book.