Howard Solomon

Howard Solomon

Queer Spirit Podcast

Howard Solomon is an academic historian and community activist who, in an earlier life, served for over 30 years on the faculty of Tufts University and taught courses on European history, the history of sexuality, and the history of stereotyping. Howard has also been a scholar in residence at the Sampson Center for Diversity at the University of Southern Maine. Among other projects, he curated a traveling exhibition about Charlie Howard, the young gay man who was murdered in the early 1980’s in Bangor by three high-school boys, entitled “Twenty Years Later: How Far Has Maine Come?” He’s also spoken throughout Maine on antisemitism and continued to write, including an essay about the creation of Portland as a so-called “gay mecca.”

Over the years Howard’s community engagements have included Merrymeeting Arts Center, the Maine Task Force on LGBT Youth, Maine Jewish Film Festival, Maine Initiatives, the Matlovitch Society, and the National Coalition Building Institute. In 2007 Equality Maine recognized Howard for being the remarkable queer treasure that he is by giving him a lifetime achievement award, which might give some folks the impression that Howard has slowed down or even entered his dotage. Not so, because Howard keeps shifting gears and in recent years has been devoting more time and energy to producing art, especially collage and found-object sculpture.

Marvin Ellison and Tamara Torres-McGovern

Howard Solomon