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).
• “Funeral Rights.” Male Femininities NYU Press, 2023: 311-313.
• Middle of Everywhere Podcast- Guest Editor (2022-2023)
• Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism (1st editor and contributor ) Edited with Amy K. Levin. Routledge, 2020
• “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).

Selected Works of Dr. Adair

• The Art of Shrinking: Minority Stress, Coping, and Camp in Beverley Nichols's "Merry Hall" Trilogy.
• Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America's Changing Communities, Second Edition
• "Turned on: On the Impossibility of Queer (and) Composition
• Cabbage Pat Kids
• Camping in the Cornfields
• Conducted in a Whisper: A Case Study of the Current State of LGBT Studies
• Courting Controversy: How I Became an Opportunistic Improvisationalist
• DIY
• Disembodied Desire
• Domestic Deviance
• Dorothy's Goddamn Diamonds
• Irresistible 6.20.docx
• Looking for Love in All the Wronged Places
• “Museums, Molars, Money: Coming to Terms with (Teaching) COVID-19.”
• Museums, Sexuality, and Gender Activism
• “Not Satisfied with the Ending: Connecting The World in the Evening to Maurice.”
• “The Corpse Comes Out: Spectral Sexualities and the Biographer’s Impulse.”
• The Girl with the Gravestone Sidewalk: A Poetics of the Dead."
• Those Who Cant
• Willa's Case: Queer Narratives and Virtual Museums
• "Adventurous Activism"
• "Analog Sexting"
• "Beverley Nichols' and John Fowler's Queer Domesticity"
• "Chasers"
• "Debbie Does Death"
• "Diamonds Scar Forever"
• "Dinah Might"
• "Ethel at the Wheel"
• "Forego the Fads"
• "Glassy-Eyed Nostalgia"
• "Gram's Pinches"
• "Haute Hands"
• "Hope Chest"
• "House Museum or Walk-In Closet? The (Non)Representation of Gay Men in the Museums They Called Home"
• "House of Ill-Rebuke"
• "O [Queer] Pioneers! Narrating Queer Lives in Virtual Museums
• "O [Queer] Pioneers: Narrating Queer Lives in Virtual Museums."
• "Reading Helen"
• "Road Rage"
• "Safe as Houses"
• "The Suicide Survivor's Guide to Crafts"
• "The Victorian Era's Strange Love of Disembodied Hands"
• "To Helen, A Handbasket"
• "Water Closet Wisdom: Queer Sexuality and Historical House Museums"
• "Wilde Nostalgia: Queer Tradition in Beverley Nichols's Garden Trilogies."
• ""More than slightly mad": Beverley Nichols and the Merry Hall Trilogy."

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 Rhetorical Theory
• 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 Seminar in Gender Studies
• HUM 211 Topics in Literature and Philosophy
• 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