JESS WAGGONER
EDUCATION
Ph.D. in English, Indiana
University, Bloomington, 2016
M.A. in English, Indiana
University, Bloomington, 2011
B.A. in English, Honors,
Earlham College, 2008
DISSERTATION
Crip Modernisms: The Roots of Disability Consciousness in American Literature and Culture Dir.
Scott Herring, Indiana University, Bloomington
POSITIONS HELD
Assistant Professor
of Gender and Women’s Studies
and English, University of Wisconsin, Madison,
August 2020-Present
Postdoctoral Fellow,
Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Program, University of Houston,
2017-2020
Visiting Lecturer,
Department of English,
Indiana University, Bloomington, 2016-2017
AWARDS, GRANTS, AND FELLOWSHIPS
External
American Association of University Women
American Fellowship, 2022-2023 National Endowment for the
Humanities Summer Stipend, 2020
Catherine Prelinger Award, Coordinating Council
on Women in History ($20,000
award), 2019- 2020
Modernist Studies
Association Research Grant,
2017
Schlesinger Collections Library Research Grant, Radcliffe Institute
for Advanced Study, Harvard
University, 2014-2015
Smith College
Library Travel to Collections Grant,
Smith College, 2015
Runner-up, Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars
in Disability Studies,
Society for Disability
Studies, 2014
Emerging Scholar
Award, Disability History
Association, 2013
Internal
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Institute
for Research in the Humanities Fellowship, Spring 2024 Fall Research
Competition Summer Salary
Award, 2022, 2023, 2024
University of Houston
Women’s, Gender
and Sexuality Studies
Faculty Summer Fellowship, University of Houston, 2019
Indiana University, Bloomington
Collins Living
and Learning Center
Teaching Award, Indiana,
2016 Susan D. Gubar Dissertation Fellowship, Indiana University, 2015
J.A. Robbins
Memorial Prize, Indiana
University Department of English, 2015
Sponsored Participant, Indiana University Graduate
School, National Center
for Faculty Diversity and
Development Dissertation Success Program, 2015
College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Year Research Fellowship, Indiana University, 2014- 2015
Outstanding Graduate
Student Award, Indiana
University Commission on Multicultural
Understanding, 2014
Center for
Research on Race and Ethnicity in
Society Travel Award, Indiana University, 2014 College Arts and Humanities Institute Research Travel
Grant, Indiana University, 2013
University Graduate
School Grant in Aid of Doctoral Research, Indiana University, 2013 Disability Student Services
Excellence in Education Award,
Indiana, 2013
POSITIONS OF SCHOLARLY COMPETENCE
Panels Organized and
Chaired
Respondent and Organizer, “Returning to ‘Normal’ University Life: Pandemic Pedagogies during Debilitating Times.” Modern Language Association, San
Francisco, California, 2023.
Respondent and Organizer, “LGBT Health Humanities.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, 2020.
Chair,
“Embracing the Mess, Engaging the Complex: Disability Politics and Anti-Ableist Practices Among
Poor and Racialized Populations.” American Studies
Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 2018.
Chair, “Feeling
(In)Human: Rethinking Racialized Affect and Disability Biopolitics.” National
Women’s Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 2018.
Organizer and Presenter, “Intersectional Approaches to Modernism
and Modernity.” University of Houston Department of
English, 2018.
Organizer, “Disability, Institutionalization, and State Violence.” Modern Language Association, New York, New York, 2018
Organizer and Presenter, “Disabled Sexualities and Feminist
Health.” National Women’s
Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland, 2017
Co-organizer and Presenter, “New Directions in Literary/Cultural Disability Studies and Critical Ethnic Studies.” Modern Language
Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2017
Organizer and Presenter, “Reconfiguring the Public and Private through
Modernist Disability
Studies.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2017
Organizer and Presenter, “Touching
Disability: Crip Theory
in the Archive.” Modern Language Association, Austin, Texas, 2016
Panel Organizer, “Disability, Race,
and Sexuality in U.S. Modernisms.” Modernist Studies
Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2014
Panel Organizer, “Disability Studies and Professionalization in the Humanities.” Society for
Disability Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2014
Publications Refereed For
Manuscript Reviewer for Signs:
A Journal of Women and Culture in Society, 2022-Present Manuscript Reviewer for American
Quarterly, 2022-Present
Manuscript Reviewer for Essays in Philosophy, 2022-Present
Manuscript Reviewer for Frontiers:
a Journal of Women’s Studies, 2017-Present Manuscript Reviewer
for Review of Disability Studies:
An International Journal, 2016-2019 Manuscript Reviewer for Disability Studies
Quarterly, 2015-Present
Professional Memberships
Member, Disability Studies Initiative, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 2020-Present
Forum Executive, Modern Language Association
Medical Humanities and Health Studies
Forum, Elected
Member, 2019-2024
Elected Member,
Modern Language Association Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession, 2016-2019
Member, Disability Studies Caucus, National
Women’s Studies Association
General Professional Memberships Modern Language Association, 2012-Present Society for Disability
Studies, 2012-Present
National Women’s
Studies Association, 2012-Present American Studies
Association, 2014-Present Cultural
Studies Association, 2018-2020
Coordinating Council
on Women in History, 2019-Present
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Articles and Contributions to Edited Volumes
‘“Problem Girls”:
Gender Nonconformity as Crip Resistance in Early Disabled
Feminist Life Writing”
(accepted with revisions by a/b: Autobiography Studies, Nov 14) [P]
“Dykes, Disability, & Stuff: Queer Ableisms and the Work of Cripqueer Print Cultures.” Feminist Studies. 49.1 (2023).
“Race, Gender and Sanism:
Remapping Feminist Genealogies of Madness.” Signs: A Journal of Women and Culture in Society. 47.4
(2022): 886-904. [P]
“Introduction: Visionary Politics and Methods
in Feminist Disability Studies.” The Journal
of Feminist Scholarship. Co-authored with Dr. Ashley Mog. 17.17 (2020): 1-8. [P]
“‘The Seriously
Injured of our Civic Life’:
Imagining Disabled Collectivity in Depression-era Crip
Modernisms” for Modern Fiction Studies. Special Issue, “Modernist
Fictions of Disability.” Ed. Maren Linett. 65.1. (2019): 89-110. [P]
“Disability and Afro-modernism.” The
Routledge Companion to Literature and Disability.
Invited Contributor. 2019. Ed. Alice
Hall.
‘“My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience’: Afro-modernist Critiques of Eugenics and Medical Segregation.” Modernism/modernity 24.3 (2017):
507-525. [P]
“‘Oh say can you ’ : Race and Mental Disability in Performances of Citizenship.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 10.1 (2016):
87-102. [P]
“Cripping the Bildungsroman: Reading
Disabled Intercorporealities in Truman Capote’s
Other Voices, Other Rooms.” Journal of Modern Literature 38.1
(2014): 56-72. [P]
Book Reviews and Other Critical
Reviews
“Leaky Masculinities, Porous Nations,
Queercrip Affiliations: Review of Vulnerable
Constitutions: Queerness, Disability, and the Remaking
of American Manhood.” For Journal of Modern Literature, Fall 2021.
“Review of Barriers and Belonging: Personal
Narratives of Disability” for Disability Studies Quarterly, March 2018.
“Review of Bodies of Modernism: Physical
Disability in Transatlantic Modernist Literature.” for
English: Journal
of the English Association, 2018.
Lectures and Scholarly Papers Presented; Conference Organization; and Seminars
Lectures and Scholarly Papers
Presented
Roundtable Presenter, “Crip of Color
Critique.” Modern Language
Association, January 2024. Roundtable Presenter, “Crip Care,
Crip Kinship: Creative Resistance for Survival.” National
Women’s Studies
Association, October 2023
Roundtable Presenter, “Crip Pedagogies in Apocalyptic Times.”
National Women’s Studies Association, November 2022
Roundtable Presenter, “Queercrip Kinships: Archives, Doulas, and Restorying.” National Women’s Studies Association, November 2022
““Clean pigs”:
Disability, Care Labor,
and Animality in Claude McKay’s
Romance in Marseilles,”
Modernist Studies Association, October 2022
“Race, Gender
and Sanism: Remapping Mad Feminist Genealogies.” Modern Language
Association, January 2022
“Disability,
Race and the Politics of Care.” Modern Language Association, January 2022 “Re–imagining Black Disabled Citizenship through Ebony Magazine, 1945–1950.” Organization
of American
Historians, April 2021.
“Gender,
Sanism, and Racialized Narrative Prosthesis: Black Women’s Erasure from Mad
Representation.” National Women’s
Studies Association, San Francisco, CA, November
2019.
Roundtable Participant, “Teaching Disability Justice
Studies,” National Women’s
Studies Association, San Francisco, CA, November 2019.
“Print Cultures of Crip Feminist Coalitions, 1980-2000,” Cultural Studies
Association, New Orleans,
Louisiana, May 2019.
“Mad Literatures, Women of Color,
and Racialized Narrative Prosthesis,” Ohio State University/Society for Disability Studies
Conference, Columbus, Ohio,
April 2019.
“Disabled Students, Faculty, and the Classrooms Where
We Teach and Learn,” Modern Language Association, Chicago,
Illinois, 2019.
Roundtable Participant, “Sustaining Disability Studies
in Times of Crisis,” American
Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 2018.
“Race, Gender and the Exclusion
of Black Women from Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry
Movements,” Multiethnic Literatures of the United
States, Las Vegas,
Nevada, 2018
“Dykes, Disability and Stuff: Exploring Lesbian
Activist Praxis.” National
Women’s Studies Association,
Baltimore, Maryland, 2017
“Disability Access
as Feminist Praxis at NWSA and Beyond.”
National Women Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland,
2017
“Disabled Lesbian
Counterpublics.” American Studies
Association, Chicago, 2017
“Wallace Stegner
and Deaf Futurity.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2017 “Claiming Citizenship through
Disability in Ebony Magazine.” Crip Futures: The Then and
There of Disability Studies
Conference, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2016
‘“A Displaced Person of American
Democracy’: Black Medical
Citizenship in the 1940s.”
American Studies
Association, Toronto, Ontario,
2015
“Disability, Illness,
and the Harlem Renaissance.” Critical
Ethnic Studies Association, Toronto,
Ontario, 2015
“‘A Talent
for Intimacy’: Identification as Crip Artistry
in the Memoirs of Katharine Butler Hathaway.” Modernist
Studies Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2014
“‘Beetlejuice speaks
the truth’: Blackness, Mental Disability and Performances of
Citizenship.”
Society for Disability Studies,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2014
“Evasion as De-sensationalization in Disabled Women’s
Modernist Life Writing.” American Comparative Literature Association, New York, New York, 2014
“Reading Queer
Disabled Intercorporeality in Truman Capote’s
Other Voices, Other
Rooms.”
Society for Disability Studies,
Orlando, Florida, 2013
“Modern Vulnerabilities: Blackness and Disability in Wallace Thurman’s The Blacker the Berry
and Langston Hughes’ The Ways
of White Folks.” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since
1900, University of Louisville, 2013
“Identification, Abjection, and the Microcephalic Body:
Performance at the Intersection of Mental and Physical
Disability.” CUNY Graduate
Center Conference on Cripples, Idiots, Lepers and Freaks: Extraordinary
Bodies/Extraordinary Minds, New York, 2012
Conference Panels Organized and
Chaired
Respondent and Organizer, “Returning to ‘Normal’ University Life: Pandemic Pedagogies during Debilitating Times.” Modern Language Association, San
Francisco, California, 2023.
Respondent and Organizer, “LGBT Health Humanities.” Modern Language Association, Seattle, Washington, 2020.
Chair,
“Embracing the Mess, Engaging the Complex: Disability Politics and Anti-Ableist Practices Among
Poor and Racialized Populations.” American Studies
Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 2018.
Chair, “Feeling (In)Human: Rethinking Racialized Affect and Disability Biopolitics.” National Women’s Studies Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 2018.
Organizer and Presenter, “Intersectional Approaches to Modernism
and Modernity.” University of Houston Department of
English, 2018.
Organizer, “Disability, Institutionalization, and State Violence.” Modern Language Association, New York, New York, 2018
Organizer and Presenter, “Disabled Sexualities and Feminist
Health.” National Women’s
Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland, 2017
Co-organizer and Presenter, “New Directions in Literary/Cultural Disability Studies and Critical Ethnic Studies.” Modern Language
Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2017
Organizer and Presenter, “Reconfiguring the Public and Private through
Modernist Disability
Studies.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2017
Organizer and Presenter, “Touching
Disability: Crip Theory
in the Archive.” Modern Language Association, Austin, Texas, 2016
Panel Organizer, “Disability, Race,
and Sexuality in U.S. Modernisms.” Modernist Studies
Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2014
Panel Organizer, “Disability Studies
and Professionalization in the Humanities.” Society for
Disability Studies, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2014
Seminars
External
National Endowment
of the Humanities Summer Seminar:
Global Histories of Disability,
Gallaudet University, 2018.
Presentation: “Crip Modernisms: Unspectacular Disability.” Dartmouth Futures
of American Studies
Institute, Summer 2014 (Susan D. Gubar Chair Sponsored Participant)
Cornell School
of Criticism and Theory, “Disability and Narrative” seminar,
2013
Internal
Participant, “Care: Politics, Performances, Publics, Practices,” Borghesi-Mellon Workshops.
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 2020-Present
Workshops Led
External
Disability Justice
in Writing Centers.
Workshop Leader, Indiana
University Writing Tutorial Services. 17 April 2021.
“Beyond Accommodation: Disability Justice
and Access in Your Workplace
and Community.” Workshop
Leader, American Legal Association. 29 April 2021.
Workshop leader,
“Feminist Access in the Classroom,” Sam Houston State University, April 2019.
Internal
University of
Houston
“Feminist Disability Pedagogy Workshop.” Workshop
Leader, University of Houston, Spring 2018
Indiana University, Bloomington
“What I Learned From Writing Every Day.” Workshop
Co-Leader, Indiana University Graduate School, Spring 2016
“Funding Research
and Travel.” Workshop
Leader, Indiana University Department of English,
Fall 2015
“Accessibility in the Classroom.” Workshop, Co-Leader, and Organizer with Prof. Justin Hodgson, Indiana University
Department of English, Fall 2013
Panel Participation and Invited Talks
External
Invited Keynote,
“Postwar Faculty Colloquium.” University of North Texas, Denton,
TX, April 2025.
Invited Keynote,
“Cosmologies of Care.” University of Houston, Houston,
TX, October 2023. Invited Talk, “Queer and Trans
Perspectives in Healthcare and Beyond.” Middleton Public
Library, Middleton, WI, June 2023
Invited Keynote,
“Care Ethics Otherwise: A Conference.” Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State University,
State College, PA, June 2023.
Invited panelist, “Centering Race and Disability in Histories of Eugenics.” Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, October 2022
Invited panelist,
“The Art of Flourishing: Conversations on Disability.” The Hastings Center, New York, NY, February 2022
Invited talk, “Race, Gender,
and Sanism: Remapping Mad Feminist Genealogies.” Colby College WGSS
Colloquium, November 2021
Invited panelist,
“The Future of Disability Studies
at the Intersections.” Panel for Feminist
Studies Association, December 2020
Invited panelist,
“Covid-19 and Inequality,” Rice University, September 2020
Invited talk,
‘“Dykes, Disability n’ Stuff’: Cripqueer Print Cultures, 1980-2000,” Rice University, February 2020
Invited talk, “Access, Interdependence, and Pedagogy.” University of Texas, Arlington, October 2019
Invited talk, “Crip Activisms, Aesthetics, and Ethics of Care.”
CounterCurrents Arts Festival, Houston, TX, April 2019
Invited
presentation, “Disability, Gender and Sexuality Workshop.” Invited
Presentation, GLOBAL (LGBTQ Student
Organization), University of Houston, Houston,
TX, October 2018.
Invited talk, “Disability in a Diverse
Society.” Invited Talk, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, Spring 2016
Invited panelist, ‘“My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience’: Disability, Afro-Modernism and Noncompliant Patienthood.” Society
for Disability Studies, Atlanta,
Georgia, Opening Plenary: “Disability, Race and the Limits of Rights-Based
Discourse,” 2015
Research talk,
“Gender and Disability Before the Mid-century.” Schlesinger Library, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 2014
Internal
Invited panelist, “Beauty and Belonging.” University of Houston
Living Archives Series,
April 2019
Work Submitted for Publication
“Cripping Afro-Modernisms: Race, Gender, and the Roots
of Disability Consciousness, 1900- 1950” (book manuscript submitted January 15th to New York
University Press)
Work In Progress
“Queer Ableisms
and the Persistence of Cripqueer Life” (second book project; in progress; est. completion December 2026)
TEACHING AT UW-MADISON
Courses
Assistant Professor of Gender
and Women’s Studies
and English, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, August 2020-Present
·
Fall 2023
o
GWS 370: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Ill and Disabled Lives
o
ENG 350: Gender and Literature
·
Fall 2022
o
GWS 640: Senior Capstone
·
Spring 2022
o
GWS 340: Intro to LGBTQ+ Sexuality: Queer Locations
·
Spring 2021
o
GWS 370: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Ill and Disabled Lives
o
ENG 350: Gender and Literature
·
Fall 2021
o
GWS 370: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Ill and Disabled Lives
o GWS 343: Queer Bodies
·
Fall 2020
o
GWS 343: Queer Bodies
Workshops Led
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Workshop co-leader with Brenna Swift
(Graduate scholar, English). “Teaching Writing For Disability Justice.” 23 April 2021.
Presentations and Lectures
at UW
Guest
Lecturer, GWS 100 Open House Seminar (Professor Anna Campbell), November 2023 Guest Lecturer, GWS 840 (Professor Jill Casid), “Disability Access as Feminist
Praxis,” October
2023
Guest Lecturer,
Law, Med Sci and Nursing
768: Health Advocacy
& Patient Centered
Care, (Professor Sachin Gupte), September 2022
Guest
Lecturer, GWS 100 Open House Seminar (Professor Sami Schalk), November 2021
Guest Lecturer, GWS 720 Feminist
Disability Studies graduate
course, (Professor Sami Schalk),
April 2021
Respondent, Miles Wilkerson (Graduate
scholar, History), “Disabled
Enslaved Knowledge and Fugitive Bounties in British North America, 1700-1775.” Critical Political
Economy Seminar, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 7 April 2021.
Student Advising
Undergraduate
Honors Thesis Advisor, 
, Gender
and Women’s Studies Undergraduate Honors Thesis
Advisor, 
, Gender and Women’s Studies MA Advisor, 
, Gender and Women’s Studies
MA Committee Member, 
, Gender and Women’s Studies PhD Committee Member, ,
Department of English
PhD Committee
Member, Department of English
SERVICE
Institutional
Member,
Disability Studies Initiative, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall
2020-Present Faculty Affiliate, Institute on Research on Women, Gender
and Sexuality, University of Houston,
2019-2020
Co-founder, Critical
Disability Studies Initiative, University of Houston,
2017-Present
Departmental
Access, Climate,
and Diversity Committee, Gender and Women’s
Studies, Fall 2023 Curriculum Committee, Gender and
Women’s Studies, Fall 2021-Spring 2022 Research Committee, Gender and Women’s
Studies, Fall 2020-Spring 2021 Professional
Forum Executive, Modern Language Association Medical Humanities and Health Studies Forum, Elected Member, 2019-2024
Gender Infinity
Conference, Accessibility Committee, 2018-2019
Modern Language
Association Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession, Elected Member, 2016-2019
Member, Disability Studies Caucus, National
Women’s Studies Association
Manuscript Reviewer for Signs:
A Journal of Women and Culture in Society, 2022-Present Manuscript Reviewer for American
Quarterly, 2022-Present
Manuscript Reviewer for Essays in Philosophy, 2022-Present
Manuscript Reviewer for Frontiers:
a Journal of Women’s Studies, 2017-Present Manuscript Reviewer
for Review of Disability Studies:
An International Journal, 2016-2019
Manuscript Reviewer
for Disability Studies
Quarterly, 2015-Present
Public
Curator
and Emcee, Queercrip Showcase, Disability Pride Madison, 27 July 2023.
Interviewee. “How One Organization is Helping to Combat the Uptick in Anti-Trans
Legislation” Verywellhealth.com. 14 June 2021.
Radio Interview. Queery. WORT 89.9 FM Madison,
Wisconsin Community Radio.
(wortfm.org).
13 April 2021.
“University of Houston’s First Transgender and Non-Binary Studies
Course” (reachhouston.com). 4 December 2019.
“Important Intersections:
Dr. Jess Waggoner teaches first Transgender Studies Course at the University of Houston.” Spectrum South: The Voice
of the Queer South. 21 August 2019.