Jeff Solomon

• 040 -  Intro Topics in Lit: Literary Activism & the Environment
• 181a -Af-Am Lit to 1900: Antiracism & the 19th century African-American Novel

Jeffrey Solomon was recently awarded a grant from California Humanities (a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanties [calhum.org]) for "Redwood Time," a multi-media collaboration with North Coast artist Anne Beck's Landlooker Society and the Fort Bragg based Larry Spring Museum of Common Sense Physics. The "Redwood Time" project offers viewers a series of artistic and historical interventions into official and unofficial representations of habitation along the North Coast, placing concepts of deep ecological time into dialogue with contemporary anthropocentric frameworks. This collaborative project addresses the ceremonial function of public monuments crafted from old-growth redwood cross-sections in order to focus specific attention upon the 19th-21st century US development of Pomo tribal land along the north coast of California. Through a combination of lectures, collaborative art, film, and analysis, we highlight unexamined biases and historical myths relating to the contemporary logging of the Jackson State Demonstration Forest, historical erasures of diverse human and ecological histories, and we call for renewed attention to the indigenous "land back" movement.

Education:

Ph.D., Univ. of Southern California (2011)

• Unsettling the Nation: Anticolonial Nationalism and the Non-Western World in U.S. Literature and Culture, 1783-1860

M.A., University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (2000)

• The Bildungsroman Tradition in 20th Century Caribbean Literature and Culture

Recent & Past Publications:

• “The Last Poets,” The Black Arts Movement. Eds. Verner Mitchell and Cynthia Davis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019.
• “‘The Appearance of a Foreign Intercourse’: Representations of Empire in John Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage.” Published proceedings of the Fort Ross Bicentennial Conference, 2013.
• “Going Back to the Land: Mendocino’s Intentional Communities and their Unintentional Legacies.” Mendocino Beacon 26 March 2013.
• "Shipwrecks Online." Kelley House Museum Newsletter 88 (Fall 2012): 4-5.
• “Candid History and the J.F. Sims Collection.” Kelley House Museum Newsletter 87 (Spring 2012): 4-5.
• “Save Byrd’s Whales.” Mendocino Beacon 23 February 2012.
• “When Hippies were Beatniks.” Mendocino Beacon 1 September 2011.
• "The Great Street-Vending Rebellion of '77." Mendocino Beacon 4 August 2011.
• “Tortured History: Filibustering, Rhetoric and Walker's War in Nicaragua." Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 31(2011): 105-132.
• “Sigmund Kracauer.” Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Eds. Michael Ryan and M. Keith Booker. London: Blackwell Publishers, 2009.
• “Formative Acts: American Politics in the Making.” Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 37.1 (2008): 62-63.
• “Amiri Baraka.” Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.
• “The Bildungsroman.” Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics. Ed. M. Keith Booker. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Public Lectures & Conference Presentations:

• “Pax Americana II, Sanctuary Series Discussion” – On Allen Ginsberg/Philip Glass, “Wichita Vortex Sutra.” Jacaranda Music, January 2020.
• “The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo” – Lecture and Discussion with Phillip Rodriguez, Director. UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, December 2019.
• “The Roots of Hip Hop” – Panel Discussion with Dr. Cheryl Keyes on Quincy (2018) by Rashida Jones. UCLA Hip-Hop Congress, February 2019.
• “UCLA Marathon Reading 2018 – Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre & Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea,” – Undergraduate Committee Organizer & Instructor. UCLA English Department, May 2018.
• “Queen without a Crown” – Panel Discussion with Dr. Cheryl Keyes on Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes by Byron Hurt. UCLA Hip Hop Congress, February 2018.
• “Selma: Film Screening and Discussion” – Moderator. UCLA Undergraduate Student Association Council’s Academic Affairs Commission, February 2018.
• “Conrad, Kipling, Achebe and ‘The Troubles’ in Ireland: Growing Up Under Colonialism” -- Lecture and Discussion with Dr. Peter O’Neill. UCLA, Guest Lecture for ENGL 134 – Nationalism & Transnationalism, January 2018.
• “The Black Panthers and Legacies of Activism” -- 41st & Central: The Untold Story of the L.A. Black Panthers. UCLA, November 2017.
• “Back to the Land: Mendocino’s Intentional Communities and their Unintentional Legacies.” Public Education Lecture Series, College of the Redwoods, April 2013.
• “Logging, Fishing and Rock & Roll: Excavating the Historical Record.” Public Education Lecture Series, College of the Redwoods, October 2012.
• “‘The Appearance of a Foreign Intercourse’: Representations of Empire in John Ledyard’s Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage.” The Fort Ross Bicentennial Conference, April 2012.
• “‘Nothing but Antic Clay’: From Filibusters to Posthole Diggers in Cormac McCarthy’s Posthuman West.” Western Literature Association (WLA) Conference, September 2009.
• Henry James, Owen Wister, and Dialectical Nationalism in the 19th Century Western.” Western Literature Association (WLA) Conference, October 2008.
• "William Walker’s Autobiography as Formative Act in The War in Nicaragua." American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference, April 2008.
• “‘Not the California You Mean’: Western Regionalism and Transnationalism in Bret Harte’s The Crusade of the Excelsior.” Western Literature Association (WLA) Conference, October 2007.
• “The Ideology of Development and the Caribbean Bildungsroman,” University of Arkansas Graduate Conference, April 2001.