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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

My research examines the literary histories of deafness, disability, and queerness from the eighteenth century forward. I also have a secondary interest in queer literature and poetry leading up to and following the Stonewall Riots (1969). 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. Novel Bodies argues that early novelists represent queer and disabled characters in their fiction to reconfigure the political and social landscapes of eighteenth-century Britain.

Currently, I am working on two book projects. The first of these, The Deaf Resonances of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, argues that the emergence of deaf education in Britain is a vital but overlooked cultural touchstone for the shape and form of eighteenth-century literature. Over roughly the same period that deaf education materialized, what we now know as novels emerged as popular print forms. Deaf ways of being, I argue, resonate across early print literary culture, imbuing prose narratives with a formal liveliness that has yet to be acknowledged in eighteenth-century studies. The other project is 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. My classes routinely challenge students to think transhistorically about disability, sexuality, gender, and race in the literature and theory we read together. I prioritize accessibility in my classrooms, and I also seek to build communities of care that foster intellectual and personal growth. Due in part to my deafness, I have learned firsthand about the importance of accessibility. I am involved in various collaborative efforts to enhance accessibility for staff, faculty, and students with disabilities, including in my appointments as a member of Marquette’s ADVANCE team and MLA’s Committee for Disability Issues. I have written in public forums about accessibility at conferences and in classrooms with the goal of establishing more inclusive communities.

Courses Taught

Grad Seminars:

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 (“Reimagining Disability”)

Research Interests

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

Publications

“Crip Sensibilities and the Limits of Oralism in Early British Deaf Education,” for The Crip Linguistics Reader, eds. Henner and Robinson, forthcoming from Gallaudet University Press (2025).
“Improvisational Accessibility and Romanticism,” Romantic Circles special issue, “Wellbeing in the Classroom,” eds. B 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.
“My Novel Body,” Bucknell UP Blog, American University Presses Blog Tour, Read. Think. Act, 2019.
“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.
Review of Review of What Pornography Knows by Kathleen Lubey, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 35.4 (2023): 556-559.
Review of Born Yesterday: Inexperience and the Early Realist Novel by Stephanie Insley Hershinow, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 62.1 (2022): 107-110.
Review of Victorian Bestseller by Karen Bourrier, Victorian Studies 63.3 (2021): 463-65.
Review of Queer Friendship: Male Intimacy in the English Literary Tradition by George Haggerty, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 32.2 (2019): 355-357.