Eric Drummond Smith
The Arts Alliance Mountain Empire, in cooperation with William King Museum of Arts, announces the first speaker in this year's AAME Speakers Series.
The AAME Speakers Series features local and regional personalities sharing their expertise on topics that enrich and encourage the arts and general communities of our region. This series also provides a forum for member organizations of AAME to tell of their contributions to the Mountain Empire region.
This first talk in this series takes place Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m., at the Bristol Public Library, Bristol, Va.
Eric Drummond Smith, guest curator for "Cherry Bounce: Appalachian Art, American Politics," talks about "Cherry Bounce: Appalachian Artists and American Election Celebrations."
As a teacher and scholar, Smith focuses on international and comparative politics. He is the assistant professor of political science at the University of Virginia's College at Wise.
He is an alumnus of three Appalachian institutions of higher learning – Emory & Henry College, where he triple-majored in political science, art and geography; the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, his master's institution, where he read for East Asian studies, focusing on Chinese politics, history, philosophy and art; and the University of Tennessee, his doctoral institution, where he read for political science, testing in the fields of international relations and comparative politics and specializing in the origins of conflict. He is also a working artist, generally describing himself as a pop expressionist-surrealist, though he clearly has an affinity with the lowbrow movement.
