Health & Humanities study in the English Department

The Department has extensive engagement with research and teaching on Disability Studies and issues in health, literature, and the humanities.

Many of our faculty participate in the Disability Studies Initiative, including the Founding Directors, Ben Reiss and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Emerita).  The Initiative is currently directed by Paul Kelleher.  Faculty who work in affiliated areas of health and humanities include Deepika Bahri, Pat Cahill, Walter Kalaidjian, and Geovani Ramírez.

Recent publications by our faculty:

Deepika Bahri — "Sick Lit: Why Stories about Sickness Matter.” The Lancet, May 2022.

Sheila Cavanagh — Multisensory Shakespeare and Specialized Communities (Arden Shakespeare/Bloomsbury, 2024)

Paul Kelleher — “Johnson and Disability.” The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson. Ed. Greg Clingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2022). 204-217.  Click here for a complete list of Prof. Kelleher’s work in Health & Humanities/Disability Studies.

Geovani Ramírez — “Black Latina Passages through Colonial Ecologies of Illness and the Art of Composting Aesthetics.” Ethnic Studies Review, 47 (1): 3-31, 2024 

Ben Reiss — Keywords for Disability Studies (with Rachel Adams and David Serlin), (New York University Press, 2015).  Click here for a complete list of Prof. Reiss’s work in Health & Humanities/Disability Studies.

Representative English Classes:

Literary History of Disability (ENG 789), Paul Kelleher, Spring 2026 

English Literature and Disability (ENG 489W), Paul Kelleher, Fall 2024

Literature and Medicine (ENG 290W), Geovani Ramírez, Spring 2026

The Neurodiverse Nineteenth Century (ENG 751R), Ben Reiss, Spring 2025

Human Health:  Literature and Science (ENG 386), Ben Reiss, co-taught with Amanda Freeman, Fall 2024

Sample Dissertations and Theses:

Lucy Wallitsch (PhD 2026) — Caregivers,Caretakers: Sociocognitive Disability and Literary Care in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Halle Gordon (BA 2024) — A Soft- Spoken Emergency: The Politicized Patient, Black Feminism, and Breast Cancer Illness Narratives

Vrushali Thakkar (BA 2024) — Metaphors for Chronic Pain in Young Adult Novels

John Gulledge (PhD 2023) — Prosthetic Laughter: Feeling Disability Performance in Early Modern England

Anikka Jordan (BA 2023) — Disability & Belonging in the American South: A Case Study of Flannery O’Connor & Carson McCullers

Catherine Cole (BA 2022) — Sexual Violence and Intergenerational Trauma in Louise Erdrich's The Round House

Danielle Collett (BA 2022) — Neurodivergence in Science Fiction: Identity, Ethics, and Technology as a "Cure"

Grace Donahue (BA 2022) — Cripping Trees: Eco-Crip Communication and Temporality in Richard Powers' The Overstory

Stephanie Larson (PhD 2020) — Hooked: Public Health, Parasites, and Twentieth-Century Literature of the US and Global South

Amy Li (PhD 2020) — A Future for Hopeful Monsters: Gender, Disability, Race, and Embodiment in Science Fiction

Lindsey Grubbs (PhD 2019) — The Politics and Poetics of Diagnosis in Nineteenth- Century American Literature and Medicine

Samantha Korn (BA 2019)  — The Representation of Chronic Illness in Young Adult and Children's Fiction

Bellee Jones-Pierce (PhD 2018) — Able Verse: Disability and the Lyric in Early Modern English Literature

Emily Jewell (BA 2018) — Disability and Morality in The Canterbury Tales

George Gordon-Smith (PhD 2015) — Constrained Bodies: Representing Slavery and Disability in American Literature and Culture

Catherine Elizabeth Double (PhD 2013) — Muscular Bodies and Formations of Masculinity and Impairment in Shakespearean Drama