Christopher Krentz

Professor, English and American Sign Language Program

Specialties

American, Disability Studies, World Anglophone

Office Address/Hours

110 Bryan Hall / W 3:30-4:30 and F 2-3 in person in Bryan 110, T 11-12 on Zoom, and by appointment.

Class Schedule

MWF 12-1 p.m., MW 2:00-3:15 p.m.

Ph.D. University of Virginia, 2002
M.A. University of Virginia, 1995
B.A. Yale, 1989

Co-editor, with Rebecca Sanchez, special issue of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies on representations of deafness 15:2 (2021).

“Blindness in Postcolonial Literature: Coetzee, Mehta, and Recognition,” in The Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Disability Studies, eds. Tsitsi Chataika and Dan Goodley (Routledge Press, 2024).
“Decolonizing Literary Studies through Disability,” in Decolonizing the Literary Curriculum, eds. Ato Quayson and Ankhi Mukherjee (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
“Illuminating the Paradoxes of Deaf Experience: Bowe, Gannon, and Disability,” Sign Language Studies 23.3 (spring 2023): 355-385.
“Introduction: Why Representation Matters.” With Rebecca Sanchez. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 15:2 (2021): 125-32.
“Disability Studies,” in A Companion to Literary Theory, ed. David Richter (Wiley Blackwell, 2018).
"Borges in the Mind’s Eye," Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 10:1 (2016): 37-51.
"The Hearing Line: How Literature Gains from Deaf People," in Deaf Gain: Reimagining Human Diversity, ed. H.-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray, University of Minnesota Press (2014).

“American Sign Language Poetry,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th edition, eds. Roland Greene and Stephen Cushman (2012).
“Disability Theory,” in The Encyclopedia of the Novel, ed. Peter Logan, Wiley-Blackwell (2010).
Contributor, The Robert Frost Encyclopedia, ed. Nancy Tuten and John Zubizarreta, Greenwood Press (2000).

Of Eric C. Nystrom and R. A. R. Edwards, Ordinary Lives: Recovering Deaf Social History through the American Census, in The Journal of the Civil War Era 15:3 (Sept. 2025): 390-93.
Of Peter J. Kalliney, The Aesthetic Cold War: Decolonization and Global Literature, in Modern Fiction Studies 70:1 (spring 2024): 184-6.
Of David Bolt, The Metanarrative of Blindness: A Re-Reading of Twentieth-Century Anglophone Writing, in American Literary History, On-line Review, Series III, (2015).
Of R. A. R. Edwards, Words Made Flesh: Nineteenth-Century Deaf Education and the Growth of Deaf Culture, in American Historical Review 118: 2 (April 2013): 512-13.

“Anthologizing ASL Literature,” Modern Language Association convention, Philadelphia PA (Jan. 2024)
“Frank Bowe, Deaf Culture, and Section 504,” Hofstra University (March 2023).
Respondent, New Literary History virtual forum on Animality/Posthumanism/Disability (Mar. 2021).
“The Impact of Disability History: A Roundtable Discussion,” University of Virginia (Dec. 2019).
“War, Neoliberalism, and Disability Human Rights in Two Chris Abani Novels,” Mellon Humanities Fellow Symposium Series, University of Virginia (Feb. 2018).
“Reading Disability and Gender in the Global South,” Disability at the Intersection symposium, University of Virginia (Feb. 2018).
"On Becoming Wise, in Goffman’s Sense," Disability across the Disciplines symposium, University of Virginia (Feb. 2016).
"Writing the Hearing Line," Gallaudet University (Oct. 2015).
"Colonialism, Disability, and J. M. Coetzee." Society for Disability Studies conference, Atlanta, GA (June 2015).

Co-director, Disability Studies Initiative at U.Va. (2015-2022)
Editorial Board, Sign Language Studies (1999-present), Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (2017-present), and Disability Studies Quarterly (2010-12)
MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession (2003-2006)
Coordinator, Annual ASL/Deaf Culture Lecture Series (1995; 2003-14; co-coordinator 1996-99)
Finalist, 1998 Seven Society Graduate Fellowship for Superb Teaching, University of Virginia