Josh Adair

"What I most fervently wish to communicate in my teaching of any subject is the interconnectedness of all things. When we draw arbitrary lines between subjects we limit perception, experience and possibility. Striving to defamiliarize the familiar, whether it be the reading of a favorite poem or learning to view a beloved film critically, I coax students toward embracing a multiplicity of perspectives and seeing intersectionality in all things."

Education

• Ph.D., English, Northern Illinois University
• M. A., English, Western Illinois University
• B.A., British and American Literature, Blackburn College
• Graduate Certificates, Northern Illinois University
  • LGBT Studies
  • Museum Studies
  • Women's Studies

Highlighted Publications

• Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America's Changing Communities, Second Edition. Rowman & Littlefield. (co-edited with Amy K. Levin).
• “Disembodied Desire.” Notches. (2017).
• "Safe as Houses." Older Queer Voices: The Intimacy of Survival. (2017).
• “Wilde Nostalgia: Queer Tradition in Beverley Nichols’s Garden Trilogies.” [sic]: A Journal of Literature, Culture, and Literary Translation. (2016).
• “The Girl with the Gravestone Sidewalk: A Poetics of the Dead.” Supernatural Studies. 3.2 (2016): 80-96.
• “The Art of Shrinking: Minority Stress, Coping, and Camp in Beverley Nichols's Merry Hall Trilogy.” (co-authored with Rebekah Goemaat). Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory 18.4(2016): 501-523.
• “The Victorian Era’s Strange Love of Disembodied Hands.” Atlas Obscura. (2016).
• “Yes/No Means No/Yes: (Non)Consensual Rhetoric.” (co-authored with Paul Walker) Writing on the Edge 26.1 (2015): 43-58.
• “The Suicide Survivor’s Guide to Crafts.” Harlot 14 (2015).
• “Not Satisfied with the Ending: Connecting The World in the Evening to Maurice.” The American Isherwood. Eds. Jim Berg and Christopher Freeman. Minneapolis: U of MN P, 2015. 273-289.
• "'Christopher wasn't satisfied with either ending': Connecting Christopher Isherwood's The World in the Evening to E. M. Forster's Maurice." Papers on Language and Literature 48.3: 302-331 (2012).
• "'One must be ruthless in the cause of Beauty,' Beverley Nichols's and John Fowler's Queer Domesticity in 1950s England." Visual Culture and Gender 5 (2010).
• "House Museum or Walk-In Closet? The (Non)Representation of Gay Men in the House Museums They Called Home." Gender and Sexuality in Museums: A Reader. Ed. Amy Levin. London: Routledge, September 2010.
• "A Love That Cares Not Speak Its Name: Clive Durham as Narrative Guide in E. M. Forster's Maurice." SKASE Journal of Literary Studies 2.1 (2010).

Courses Taught

• ENG 105 Critical Reading, Writing and Inquiry
• ENG 304 British Literature, 1760-Present
• ENG 319 Queer Literature
• ENG 321 Research in Literary Studies
• ENG 401 Film Theory and Criticism
• ENG 616 The Great House in British Fiction
• ENG 619 Queer Literature
• ENG 650 Modern Drama
• ENG 659 Modern English Literature
• ENG 690 Queer Theory, Identity and the Self
• GDS 201 Introduction to Gender and Diversity Studies
• GDS 351 Sexuality and Culture
• GDS 600 Gender Theory and Research
• GDS 690 Identity/Crisis? GDS Seminar
• HUM 211 Western Humanities Tradition
• MFA Genre Seminars:
  • Virginia Woolf and Short Fiction
  • W. H. Auden
  • The Great House
  • Queer Spectrality and Rebecca
  • James Baldwin’s Essays and Poetry

Areas of Specialization

• Modern and Contemporary British Literature
• Gender Studies

Awards and Distinctions

• Murray State Faculty Development Grant, 2016.
• Murray State Outstanding Research Award, 2016.
• Golden Key Fellowship, 2015.
• College of Humanities and Fine Arts Teaching Excellence Award, 2014.
• College of Humanities and Fine Arts Faculty Service Award, 2013.
• Regents Residential College Faculty of the Year, 2012.

Professional Memberships and Affiliations

• American Association of Museums
• Modern Language Association
• Midwest Modern Language Association
• National Women's Studies Association