Doctoral Student Fellow
PhD Candidate, Department of English, Graduate School of Arts & Science
Project: The Body Electric
Kimberly Adams is a PhD candidate in English at NYU. Her dissertation follows the application of electricity to the body in American literature and medicine from 1867 to 1970, arguing that the human body, as formed in race, sex, and gender, stages the changing public meanings of electricity across media and genres, and that electricity activates a politics of embodiment embedded in cultural and literary forms. Her project makes use of methods from the medical humanities, the history of science, media studies and literary scholarship. She is invested in work that combines material history with theoretical stakes to evoke practical consequences. She holds a B.A. in English from Vassar College and an M.A. in English from Brown University, with specializations in poetry and poetics and literary theory.