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Dr. Jason Farr

Dr. Jason FarrMarquette University

Marquette Hall, 214

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-5630jason.farr@marquette.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Associate Professor

English

I work across sub-fields, combining the study of disability with gender and sexuality studies, deaf studies, sound studies, and medical history. My training is in the British long eighteenth century but my research takes me in more contemporary directions as well. My first book, Novel Bodies: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (Bucknell University Press–Transits Series, 2019), examines how fictional representations of physical disability, deafness, and chronic illness inform the emergence of modern regimes of gender and sexuality.

My forthcoming book, The Deaf Resonances of Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Stanford University Press, 2027), argues that the history of the novel is deeply conversant with deaf history. What we now identify as novels emerged as popular print forms over roughly the same period that deaf education began to appear in Western Europe. This temporal overlap is not merely coincidental: deaf ways of being resonate across early print literary culture in significant ways. Deaf domains such as sign language, gestural communication, mishearing, and multisensory perception routinely animate the characters and plots of eighteenth-century novels.

I am also writing a creative biography that narrates the life of my deceased uncle, Joe LeSueur, a queer author who was the lover, friend, and roommate of the celebrated New York School poet, Frank O’Hara. This project details my efforts to learn about LeSueur, whom I only met briefly as a child, from the various forms of writing he published–including a pulp novel, a book of concrete poetry, theater reviews, soap operas, and a memoir. An excerpt from this project appears in The Rambling.

I enjoy teaching a range of classes in eighteenth-century literature, disability and LGBTQ+ studies, gothic fiction, the health humanities, and our department’s introduction to literary studies course. I prioritize accessibility in my classrooms, and I seek to build communities of care that foster intellectual and personal growth.

Courses Taught

Grad Seminars:

Crip Enlightenment: Gender, Sexuality, Genre
Nineteenth-Century Literature: Gothic Fiction and Form
Literature, Disability, and the Health Humanities
Queer Disability, Then and Now
Disability Theory

Undergraduate courses:

Introduction to Health Humanities
The Novel to 1900
Disability and Literature
Introduction to Gothic Literature
LGBTQ+ Narratives: Literature, Film, and Theory
Introduction to Literary Studies
First-Year Honors Seminar (“Health Humanities and the Pursuit of Social Justice” and “Reimagining Disability”)

Research Interests

Literary Studies
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Studies
Disability and Deaf Studies
Queer Studies
Health Humanities
Sound Studies

Publications

The Deaf Resonances of Eighteenth-Century Fiction (forthcoming, Stanford University Press, 2027)
“Crip Sensibilities and the Limits of Oralism in Early British Deaf Education,” for The Crip Linguistics Reader, eds. Robinson, Moriarty, and Henner, Gallaudet University Press (2025): 197-208.
“Improvisational Accessibility and Romanticism,” Romantic Circles special issue, “Wellbeing in the Classroom,” eds. Ben Pladek and Emily B. Stanback
“Disability,” in Daniel Defoe in Context, eds. George Justice and Al Rivero, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 276-283.
“Feeling for Deaf Resonance in the Eighteenth Century and Beyond,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 17.1 (2023): 1-21.
“Disability as Metaphor and Lived Experience in Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 50 (2021): 309-312.
“The Queer Kinship of Our Literary Lives: A Tribute to My Uncle Joe LeSueur (and Frank O’Hara),” The Rambling 5 (2019).
Novel Bodies: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature, Bucknell University Press (Transits Series: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850) 2019.
“Crip Gothic: Affiliations of Disability and Queerness in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764),” in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability, 2020, 109-119.
“Toward a More Accessible Conference Presentation,” co-authored with Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau, Profession, Spring Issue, 2019.
“Colonizing Gestures: Crusoe, the Signing Sovereign,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 29.4 (2017): 537-562.
“Libertine Sexuality and Queer-Crip Embodiment in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in “New Queer Readings.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 16.4 (2016): 96-118.
“Homosexuality,” Encyclopedia of British Literature: 1660-1789, eds. Gary Day and Jack Lynch, Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, 601-604.
“Sharp Minds/Twisted Bodies: Intellect, Disability, and Female Education in Burney’s Camilla (1796),” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 55.1 (2014): 1-17.
“Attractive Deformity: Enabling the ‘Shocking Monster’ from Sarah Scott’s Agreeable Ugliness,” in The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century (Bucknell UP), 2014, 181-201.