This is the fifth post in a series of interviews conducted by the Woodruff Library with the 2021-2022 Woodruff Library and Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) Fellows. Funded by the Laney Graduate School, the library and ECDS award fellowships to advanced graduate students expecting to complete their dissertations by the end of the fellowship period. Fellows are placed within the Woodruff Library and ECDS to work in an area related to their subject specialization or interest, culminating in a formal presentation in the spring.
Eric Reynolds
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?
I grew up in Northern Virginia just outside of DC. I initially attended VCU in Richmond for undergrad, then transferred to George Mason where I started majoring in Philosophy. Moved to NYC for a MA in Philosophy at the NSSR and then came to ATL for my Comparative Literature PhD.
What’s your favorite book?
Impossible question! I’ll cheat and give a few: Print Fiction: White Noise by Don DeLillo, Graphic Novel: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Non-Fiction: The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross, Academic: Truth & Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer.
What’s your favorite thing about Emory/Atlanta?
The music scene, the trees (besides the pollen), and the grits and biscuits.
What are you researching for your dissertation?
Mimesis and masks in Attic tragedy, 19th and 20th century philosophy and critical social theory, and contemporary media genre fiction.
What interested you about the Woodruff Library Fellowship?
It’s a very interdisciplinary and mixed media collection. Writers and intellectuals is a broad category and many of the women in the collection worked on seemingly very different things but have a shared experience of being black women in America (and in most cases in the South). I have been immediately drawn to the collections that include performing arts and music because of my personal interests and my research.
What will you be working on this year for your Woodruff Library Fellowship?
First and foremost trying to create some resources to highlight the collection and provide easier and more centralized access to it for students, researchers, and the general public. Potentially hoping to organize one or more events that bring together works from the collection with contemporary black women intellectuals and artists inside and outside of academia.