Open gallery

Milo Obourn, PHD

(He/They)

Professor and Chair

(585) 395-2034
mobourn@brockport.edu
Office: Fannie Barrier Williams Bldg 118
Office Hours:

Tuesday/Thursday 9-11am

Recipient of the Chancellor's Award for

Teaching

Education

Ph.D. Department of English, New York University, 2006
Dissertation: “Critical Distances: Liberal Multiculturalism, U.S. Citizenship, and Contemporary American Literature,” Director: Phillip Brian Harper
M.A. Department of English, New York University, 2000
B.A. English Literature & French Language and Literature, Tufts University, summa cum laude, 1998

Courses Taught

SUNY BROCKPORT

Trans, Racial, and Disability Justice: Intersections in Contemporary US Literature and Culture (grad seminar)
Introduction to Intersectional Disability Studies
Disability Studies and American Literature
Gender, Race, Class
Queer Theory, Disability Theory, and Contemporary American Literature (graduate seminar)
Asian American Literature (graduate seminar)
American Literature 1920-1950: Lead-up to Civil Rights (graduate seminar)
Critical Approaches to Literature (senior capstone & MA “swing” course)
American Literature after 1950 (senior & MA “swing” course)
Race, Sex, Gender and the Public Sphere (senior seminar)
African American Women Writers (cross-listed with Women’s Studies)
American Women Writers: Women with Weapons (cross-listed with Women’s Studies)
Sex and Gender in Literary Theory (cross-listed with Women’s Studies)
Disability Studies and American Literature: Honors College Contemporary Issues
American Literature II Survey: 1865-present
College Composition

SUNY PURCHASE

The Search For Equity: Race, Class, and Gender in America Since 1945

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, GALLATIN SCHOOL FOR INDIVIDUALIZED STUDY

Multiculturalism in American Political Thought and Literature Freshman Writing Seminar: Self-Representation in Writing

PACE UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENTS OF ENGLISH AND WOMEN’S STUDIES

Women’s Bodies: Violence and Resistance (Freshman Writing component to a Learning Community, interdisciplinary pairing with Introduction to Women’s Studies)
Women in Literature (cross-listed with Women’s Studies) Introduction to Women’s Studies Through Civic Engagement (Women’s Studies)

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Representations of Women
Literary Interpretation (English major gateway course)
Writing New York, Teaching Assistant
American Literature I Survey: beginnings-1865, Teaching Assistant

Research Interests

Disability Studies
Contemporary American Literature
Social Identity and Cultural Citizenship
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Critical Race Studies

SUNY DEISJ Fellow 2023-2024

United University Professionals Individual Development Grant

2019

Fannie Barrier Williams Courage Award 2018

Brockport Diversity Engagement Award 2015

Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching 2013-2014

Nuala McGann Drescher Research Leave Fellowship	Spring 2011
United University Professionals Individual Development Grant	2009
Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, NYU	2005
Tuttleton Dissertation Fellowship, Department of English, NYU	2004
MacCracken Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, NYU	2000-2004

ARTICLES

“Sex Work and Disability: An Introduction to the Special Issue.” Co- authored with Lindsay Blewett and Angela Jones. Disability Studies Quarterly, Volume 42, Number 2 (Spring 2022).
“Disabling Racial Economies: Ableism and the Reproduction of Racial Difference in Nella Larsen’s Passing and
Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif.” Contemporary African American and Black British Women Writers: Narrative,
Race, Ethics. Eds. Sheldon George and Jean Wyatt. Routledge. January 2020.
“Racialized Disgender and Disruptive Futurity in Lorde’s and Engelberg’s Cancer Narratives,” Genders, Volume 1, Issue 2 (Fall 2016): http://www.colorado.edu/genders/issue-12-fall-2016-0.
“Object fear: The national dissociation of race and racism in the era of Obama,” co-written with Dr. Annie Lee Jones, clinical psychologist, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, Volume 19 (Fall 2014): 392–412.
“Octavia Butler’s Disabled Futures,” Contemporary Literature, Volume 54, Number 1 (Spring 2013): 109-138.
“Speaking with the Same Weapons: Voice Work in Wright and Hurston,” Twentieth Century Literature, Volume 58, Number 2 (Summer 2012): 238-66.
“Arturo Islas’s La Mollie and the King of Tears,” Hispanic American Literature Volume of The Encyclopedia of Ethnic American Literature. Ed. Luz Ramirez. Facts on File, 2008. 185-86.
“Hybridity, Identity, and Representation in La Mollie and the King of Tears,” American Literature, Volume 80,Number 1 (March 2008): 141-66.
“Audre Lorde: Trauma Theory and Liberal Multiculturalism,” MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Volume 30, Number 3 (Fall 2005): 219-45.

BOOKS

Disabled Futures: A Framework for Radical Inclusion. Dis/Color Series. Temple University Press. January 2020.
Reconstituting Americans: Liberal Multiculturalism and Identity Difference in Post-1960s Literature. Palgrave. August 2011.

POETRY

“On Reading Jeanette Winterson,” Wilde Magazine: A Magazine of Art and Literature with a Queer Edge, Issue One (Winter 2012): 38.
“Speaking of Power” and “Enyo,” ADANA, Special Issue “Women and War a Tribute to Adrienne Rich” (March 2013): 86-88.

“What’s so Funny About Trans Justice? A Critique of Cisgenderism in Mixed Affective Registers.” Rochester Institute of Technology, WGSS Speakers Series, February 2023.
“Beyond Trans Rights: What do Dave Chappelle and CRT Debates have to do with Coalitional Trans Justice?” Annual Rainbow Lecture, Susan B Anthony Institute, University of Rochester, Invited Talk, March 21, 2022.
“Transnational Trans Equality: How Centering an Intersectional Critique of Cisnormativity Supports Coalitional Social Justice,” National Women’s Studies Association, Virtual, September-October 2021.
“‘Picking up Queer Ideas’: Children, Race, and Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing,” American Comparative
Literature Association, UCLA, CA, March 2019.
“Racialized Disgender: Caring About the Body Beyond the Binary” in Knowledge, Identity, and Place: Resisting
Binaries and Re-envisioning a Gender Expansive University, National Women’s Studies Association,
November 2018.
“Narrative Economies and the Price of Privilege in Passing and The Sound and the Fury,” American Comparative
Literature Association, UCLA, CA, March 2018.
“The Liberation Movements: Where are they and what do they look like today?” Invited facilitation at The
Rainbow Dialogues: A Bridge from Past to Present, Rochester, NY, March 2018.
“Community Conversations: Expanding the Inclusive Conversation” and “Campus-Wide Committee on Disability and Access: A New Initiative at SUNY Brockport” co-presented with Drs. Jennifer Ashton and Jessica Sniatecki, SUNY Diversity Conference: Awareness to Action, November 2016.
“Disgender Performativity and Queer Illness in Audre Lorde, Miriam Engelberg, and Cherrie Moraga,” Invited talk, Willamette University, Oregon, October 2016.
“The Economics of Racialized Internal Processes in the Individual Psyche and our Culture,” co-presented with Dr. Annie Lee Jones, Invited talk for NYU’s PostDoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis Committee on Ethnicity, Race, Class, Culture, and Language, April 16, 2016, NYU.
“White Guys in Wheelchairs: Lost, Avatar, and the Appropriation of Disability,” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard, March 2016.
“Disgender and the Politics of Care in Lorde’s and Engelberg’s Cancer Narratives,” MLA, Austin, TX, 2016.
“Do Not Create a Hunger: Vampirism as Social Disability in Gomez’s The Gilda Stories,” After Queer After Humanism: Rice English Symposium, Houston, TX, September 2012.
“Disabled Futures of the Queer Wound: Islas and Moraga,” NEMLA, Rochester, NY, March 2012.
“Queering Through Cripping: Butler and Butler,” MLA, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011.
“Economies of Race in the Political Psyche,” co-presented with Annie Lee Jones, Psychoanalysis, Money and the Economy Conference, Birkbeck College & Freud Museum, London, July 2010.
“Jamaica Kincaid’s International Geographic,” American Studies Association of Korea, Seoul, October 2009.
“Rethinking Subjective Universality: Aesthetics and Politics in a Post-post-Kantian Moment,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Harvard University, March 2009.

Academic Positions

State University of New York, Brockport, Chair, Women & Gender Studies (2019-present)
State University of New York, Brockport, Professor of English, English Department (2007-present)
State University of New York, Purchase College, Adjunct Professor, School of Liberal Studies and Continuing Education (2007)
New York University, Adjunct Professor, Gallatin School for Individualized Study (2006-2007)
Pace University, Adjunct Professor, Department of Women’s Studies and Department of English (2006-2007)
New York University, Instructor, Department of English (2004-2005)
New York University, Teaching Assistant, Department of English (2001-2003)