Fraser Easton

Biography

I grew up in North Vancouver and studied physics and math at UBC before switching to study English and History. In graduate school, I specialized in British literature of the period 1740 to 1830 and wrote my dissertation on cross-dressing in eighteenth-century culture and society. I deepened my interest in history along the way and, after holding a Killam post-doctoral fellowship in the History Department at UBC, I joined the Department of English at Waterloo, where I research eighteenth-century and Romantic era literature and history.

I am currently at work on two historical projects:

1. The first project examines the intersections of gender, class, and sexuality in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century media coverage of gender variant garb. As part of this project, I am the principal investigator on a SSHRC Insight Grant on “Cross-Dressing in the News: Social Practice and Generic Constraint in the Times, 1785-1884.” I encourage History students who are interested in contributing to this project to reach out to me. One of the outputs of this research is a digital humanities database, currently under development: the Waterloo Cross-Dressing Archive (WXDA).
2. The second project traces the intellectual history of elocution (otherwise known as delivery or performed speech), the foremost theory of communication in Britain from c. 1740 to well into the nineteenth century. In an era of increasing print literacy, elocutionists focused on and sought to theorize the paralinguistic features of performed speech such as gesture and tone, communicative attributes that were also understood to be shared between humans and animals.

Education

• B.A. University of British Columbia
• M.A. Princeton University
• Ph.D. Princeton University

Research and Teaching Interests

• Gender and media in Britain, c. 1660-1832
• Early modern trans* history
• Gender and labour in Britain, c. 1660-1832
• Eighteenth-century communication, rhetoric, and media
• Political economy and empire (Adam Smith, Maria Edgeworth)
• Early modern digital humanities

Courses Taught

• Early Modern Trans* Writing
• The Eighteenth-Century Black Atlantic
• Enlightenment Voice, Animal Communication
• Globalization and Romanticism
• History Before and After Foucault

Selected Publications

“Smart (Studies) Now,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 57 (2024): 479-89.

“Jane Austen and the Art of Elocution: Discerning Feeling in Persuasion,” in Jakub Lipski and M-C. Newbould, eds., Edinburgh Companion to the Eighteenth-Century British Novel and the Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024), 307-326.

“Enlightenment and Exchange,” in “Refusing Eighteenth-Century Fictions, Part 2,” ed. Eugenia Zuroski and Manu Samriti Chander, a special issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction 36 no. 2 (2024): 309-314.

“Yorick’s Speech and the Starling’s Song: The Limits of Elocution in A Sentimental Journey,” in W. B. Gerard and M-C. Newbould, eds., Laurence Sterne’s “A Sentimental Journey”: A Legacy to the World (Bucknell University Press, 2021), 121-149.

“Plebeianizing the Female Soldier: Radical Liberty and The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 32.3 (2020): 427-461.

“Covering Sexual Disguise: Passing Women and Generic Constraint,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 35 (2006): 97-127.

“Gender’s Two Bodies: Women Warriors, Female Husbands, and Plebeian Life,” Past and Present 180 (August 2003): 131-174.

“Cosmopolitical Economy: Exchangeable Value and National Development in Adam Smith and Maria Edgeworth,” Studies in Romanticism 42 (2003): 99-125.

“Christopher Smart’s Cross-Dressing: Mimicry, Depropriation, and Jubilate Agno ,” Genre 31 (1998): 193-243.

“The Political Economy of Mansfield Park: Fanny Price and the Atlantic Working Class,” Textual Practice 12 (1998): 459-488.

Selected Activities

I currently serve as President of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Comparative Literature Department at Fordham University. In August 2004 I was a visiting Associate Professor in the Fachbereich Literaturwissenschaft at the University of Konstanz in Germany, and in April 2013 I was a visiting Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Languages at Zhejiang Gongshang University in China. From 2003 to 2007 I chaired the Women's Studies Advisory Board, at that time a university-wide committee. From 2008 to 2015 I served two terms as Chair of the English Department.

Awards and Achievements

• SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) Insight Grant, University of Waterloo
• Outstanding Performance Award, University of Waterloo
• SSHRC Standard Research Grant, University of Waterloo
• Isaac Walton Killam Memorial Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Department of History, University of British Columbia
• Princeton University Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University