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Jon R. Adams
Associate Professor of English Office: 916 Sprau Tower Email: jon.adams@wmich.edu Phone: (269) 387-2619 |
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Jon R. Adams’ research forms a confluence of studies in American
representations of war, gender and masculinity, and American
culture. 
Specifically, Professor Adams studies the cultural
meanings of manhood
and heroism as they inform American national identity.
Adams is the author of Male
Armor: the Soldier-Hero in Contemporary American Culture (University
of Virginia Press, 2008),
and his work on the subjects has appeared in Studies in American Culture, Harrington’s Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly,
and Gender Forum. Professor Adams is currently at work
on his second book, entitled Prosthetic
Manhood: Heroism in Contemporary American Culture, which
labels as “prosthesis” anything
necessary to instantiate heroic signification, from fabricated
stories to actual prosthetic devices. The book then analyzes
these culturally-labeled instances of heroism to evidence
the general disintegration
of the signifying
function of the label “hero” and contends that the proliferation
of these prostheses threatens the definitional capacity
of heroism at a moment American culture might need it most—the regular
civilian appearance of a new generation of permanently
war-wounded. A sometimes
poet, Jon’s work has appeared in The Harvard Gay and Lesbian
Review,
The James White Review, Evergreen Chronicles, The
Portable Wall, and Queer-e.
At Western Michigan, Jon Adams teaches upper-division, graduate, and special topics courses in American and Contemporary World Literatures, and upper-division and graduate courses in Critical Theory and the Novel.
A 2007 nominee for the WMU Distinguished Teaching Award, Adams is also an Honorary Faculty Inductee to Sigma Tau Delta, the International English Honor Society.
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