About Me

I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, where I teach early British literature, disability studies, and general education courses. I hold a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am originally from Bothell, Washington (north of Seattle) and spent five years in Washington, DC before moving to Madison, Wisconsin in 2012 and to Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 2019. I use she/her and they/them pronouns.

My book, Light of the Everlasting Life: Disability and Crip Eschatology in Old English Literature, argues that early medieval Christian eschatology, as manifested in Old English literary texts, was a crip eschatology: a theology of the afterlife that relied upon disabled bodies and concepts related to disability in order to convey promises of resurrection and salvation. My broader research agenda explores literary histories of disability and Christianity in the Middle Ages.

Contact

Email: Leah [dot] Parker [at] usm [dot] edu

Research Interests

• Old and Middle English literature

• disability studies

• queer and trans theory

• hagiography and homiletics

• history of medicine and the body

• medieval religion

Teaching Interests

• British literature to 1800 (including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton)

• literary theory

• disability, race, sexuality, and gender

• health and medical humanities

• world literature

• medievalism and modern fantasy

• Old English, Middle English, and history of the English language

• digital humanities

• interdisciplinary research and writing seminars