PHD The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
MPHIL The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York
BA Sarah Lawrence College
CONTACT
julia.rodas@bcc.cuny.edu
OFFICE
Colston 641
COURSES
ENG 111: Introduction to College Composition
ENG 112: Second Semester College Composition (usually with a social justice theme)
ENG 125: Great Writers of English Literature (focus on 19th-century Fiction)
Julia Miele rodas
Julia Miele Rodas is Professor of English at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. She earned her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College.
A disability studies scholar and Victorianist, Julia is co-editor of a collection on disability in Jane Eyre, The Madwoman and the Blindman (The Ohio State University Press, 2012) and co-editor of the Literary Disability Studies book series for Palgrave Macmillan. Her writing has appeared in numerous books and journals, including Victorian Literature & Culture, Dickens Studies Annual, The Victorian Review, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, and other venues.
Her monograph, Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe (University of Michigan Press, 2018)—theorizes the role of autistic rhetoric and aesthetic in literature. Julia teaches writing, literature, and disability studies at Bronx Community College as well as guest courses at Lehman College, CUNY’s School for Professional Studies, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also co-Chair of the Columbia University Seminar in Disability, Culture & Society and serves as lead consultant on the Metropolitan Museum’s Crip the Met initiative.
Areas
Disability Studies, Nineteenth-century Fiction; Graphic Narrative, Science Fiction
Personal Website
books
Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe. Foreword by Remi Yergeau. University of Michigan Press, 2018.
The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability. Eds. David Bolt, Julia Miele Rodas, Elizabeth Donaldson. Foreword by Lennard J. Davis. The Ohio State University Press, 2012.
edited book series
Literary Disability Studies (Palgrave Macmillan). Eds. David Bolt, Elizabeth Donaldson, and Julia Miele Rodas.
Anelise Haukaas. Disability Identity in Simulation Narratives, 2024. Forthcoming.
Susannah B. Mintz and Gregory Fraser, eds. Placing Disability: Personal Essays of Embodied Geography, 2024. Forthcoming.
Arianna Introna. Autonomist Narratives of Disability in Modern Scottish Writing Crip Enchantments, 2022.
Devon Healey. Dramatizing Blindness: Disability Studies as Critical Creative Narrative, 2021.
Erik Grayson and Maren Scheurer, eds. Amputation in Literature and Film: Artificial Limbs, Prosthetic Relations, and the Semiotics of "Loss," 2021.
Leslie C. Dunn, ed. Performing Disability in Early Modern English Drama, 2020.
Elizabeth Grubgeld. Disability and Life Writing in Post-Independence Ireland, 2020.
Alex Tankard. Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature: Invalid Lives, 2018.
Lindsey Row-Heyveld. Dissembling Disability in Early Modern English Drama, 2018.
Elizabeth J. Donaldson, ed. Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health, 2018.
Hannah Thompson. Reviewing Blindness in French Fiction, 1789–2013, 2017.
Michael Bradshaw, ed. Disabling Romanticism: Body, Mind, and Text, 2016.
Chris Foss, Jonathan W. Gray, and Zach Whalen, eds. Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives, 2016.
Patricia Friedrich. The Literary and Linguistic Construction of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: No Ordinary Doubt, 2015.
selected articles & book chapters
“Peaks and Valleys: Disability in the Bronx.” With Sonia Gonzalez, Annette Serrano, Cindy Hernandez, Andrew Whyte, Jovan Campbell, and Mary Morfe. Placing Disability: Personal Essays of Embodied Geography, edited by Susannah B. Mintz and Gregory Fraser. Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming.
“Relocating Violence & Neurodivergence” (graphic essay). Neurofutures, edited by Remi Yergeau, Elizabeth Donaldson & Ralph Savarese. Modern Language Association. Forthcoming.
“Radical Lessons in the Wake of Black Lives Matter” (graphic essay). With Mamadou Barry, Madeline Lewis, Eric Moore, Luis Moreau, and Julio Rodriguez. Radical Teacher: A Socialist, Feminist, and Anti-Racist Journal on the Theory and Practice of Teaching, vol. 115, 26 Nov 2019, https://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/radicalteacher/article/view/674
“Narrative Architecture and Autistic Voice in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Disabling Romanticism: Body, Mind, and Text, edited by Michael Bradshaw, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 169-90.
reviews, encyclopedia articles & short essays
“Black Autism: A Conversation with Diana Paulin.” College Language Association Journal / CLAJ, vol. 64, no. 1, March 2021, pp. 121-26.
“YouDescribe: Testing Crowd-sourced Video Description for Service Learning at the City University of New York.” JITP: The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 22 Dec 2015, https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/youdescribe-testing-crowd- sourced-video-description-for-service-learning-at-the-city-university-of-new-york/
“How I Wore My Trollope T-Shirt to the Dickens House Museum (and Other Musings of an American Trollopian in England).” Trollopiana, vol. 102, Autumn 2015, pp. 6-9.
“Identity.” Keywords for Disability Studies, edited by Rachel Adams, Benjamin Reiss, and David Serlin, New York University Press, 2015, pp. 103-104.
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS, TALKS & CONFERENCE PAPERS
"Pursuing the Absent Subject." ASAP/14: The Arts of Fugitivity. University of Washington, 5 Oct 2023, Seattle, WA.
“Personal Violence & Global Contexts: A Disability Studies Rereading.” Disability Impact: The Annual Conference of Interdisciplinary, Intersectional, and International Disability Studies. Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University, 5 Jul 2023, Liverpool, UK.
“Autism Aesthetics in the Photo Arrays of Bernd and Hilla Becher.” Metropolitan Museum of Art, 26 Jul 2022, New York, NY.
“Autism Poetics & Illusions of Progress.” Panel: Neurodivergent Poetics: Extending the Choreography, MLA Annual Convention, 6 Jan 2022, Virtual/Washington, DC.
“Can We Learn to Think Differently About People Who Engage in Violence?” New York Institute of Technology, 20 Oct 2020, online/Zoom.
“An Aesthetics of Fluidity and Ambiguity.” Indoor Voices Podcast, hosted by Olivia Moy and Kathleen Collins, 18 Nov 2019, John Jay College, New York, NY,https://indoorvoicespodcast.com/2019/11/18/ episode-37-an-aesthetics-of- fluidity-and-ambiguity/
“Georges Perec, Inventories & Autism Poetics: An Illustrated Talk.” Society For Literature, Science, and the Arts: Experimental Engagements, 8 Nov 2019, University of California, Irvine.
“Autism & Narrative Invention in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.” University of California, 4 Oct 2019, Berkeley.
“Autism Aesthetics: A Conversation with Diana Paulin.” Metropolitan Museum of Art, 17 May 2019, New York, NY.