Eden Rea-Hedrick

Eden Rea-Hedrick is a PhD candidate in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale, where they have also completed a certificate in Film and Media Studies. Their research interests broadly encompass disability, 20th-century British and American literature and culture, film and media, feminist and queer theory, the history of sexuality, and medical humanities. Their dissertation, “Cripples of Sex: Disability at the Queer Midcentury,” recuperates disability discourses and aesthetics in queer midcentury culture, arguing that disability is fundamental rather than detrimental to midcentury queer self-fashioning. Eden earned a B.A. in English from Indiana University, Indianapolis and studied English and Comparative Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford. In Yale’s English department, Eden convenes the Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Colloquium and serves on the Graduate Student Advisory Committee. In the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, they serve as Graduate Assistant Director of the Yale College Writing Center, a McDougal Teaching Fellow, and a graduate lead mentor for the Office of Educational Opportunity. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, The Communication Review, The Polyphony, and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.