Professor
Academic Degrees
Chris Foss, Professor of English, earned a Ph.D. in 19th-century British literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an M.A. in literature from Northeastern University, and a B.A. in English (with secondary education certification) and Spanish from Concordia College (Moorhead, Minn.).
He is the author of 20 scholarly publications and over 35 academic conference papers. His particular emphases within his specialty area include Toru Dutt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Oscar Wilde. He also has secondary expertise in disability studies, with an emphasis on autism studies.
In 2015 his co-edited book Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives is scheduled for publication with Palgrave Macmillan, an essay collection for which he also is contributing a chapter entitled “Reading in Pictures: Re-visioning Autism and Literature through the Medium of Manga.” This year he has two journal articles forthcoming as well–“Fin-de-Siècle Indian English-Language Poetry: British Imperialism, India, and the Irish Question” will appear in English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920 and “Individual Redemption through Universal Design; or, How IEP Meetings Have Infused My Pedagogy with an Ethic of Care(taking)” will appear in Caring For, Caring With: Pedagogical Responses to Living with Disabled People, a special issue of Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture.
Currently, Dr. Foss is at work on a sabbatical project analyzing the Wilde’s fairy tales through the lens of disability studies, with particular emphasis on “The Birthday of the Infanta.” He will be presenting some of this work at the annual meeting of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association this March in Boston.