top of page

Scholar

J. Myles Hesse's academic pursuits focus on dysfluency and the ways in which stuttering is represented in literature. His research is largely centered on the long-nineteenth century and combines dysfluency with other understandings of "unspeakableness," including queerness and the Gothic.

Research Areas:

Long 19th-Century British Literature, Disability Studies, Queer Studies, Gender Studies, Drama

Publications:

​

  • “Inchbald’s Dysfluent Tension: The Dysfluency of I’ll Tell You What (1785) and Lovers’ Vows (1798)." Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, forthcoming 2025.

​​

  • “The Taste of Blood? but Perchance the Taste of Love: The Consummation and Devastation of Oscar Wilde’s Spiritually Queer Vampires.” Theatron: Master’s Essays in Theater and Performance Studies, vol. 8, 2021, pp. 87-125.

Conference Presentations:

​

  • “Stammering is not allowed in this establishment: Institutional Gatekeepers in James Malcolm Rymer’s The Unspeakable,” Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States, St. Louis, MO, October 2025.​

  • “And wit they utterly abhor: The Dysfluency of William Somerset Maugham and His Rejection of the Oscar Wilde Legacy,” Midwest Victorian Studies Association, Ft. Wayne, IN, April 2025.​

  • “Transmuting the Stammering Tone: The Cures for Victorian Dysfluency in James Malcolm Rymer’s The Unspeakable,” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies, Cincinnati, OH, March 2024.​​

  • “Speech Impediments and Impeded Speech: Communicating the Unspoken in Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story,” American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Disabilities Caucus, St. Louis, MO, March 2023.

Current Projects:

Unspeakable Quandaries: Dysfluent Tensions in British Literature (1791-1919)

bottom of page