Adam R. Beach

Adam R. Beach serves as Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of English in the Department of English within the College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University. He previously held administrative roles including Interim Dean of the Graduate School (2017-2018) and English Department Chair (2014-2017), demonstrating extensive leadership in academic governance while maintaining active scholarly engagement in eighteenth-century British literary studies.

His educational background includes:

• Ph.D. in English, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000
• M.A. in English, Ohio State University, 1996
• B.A., Summa Cum Laude in English & History, Adrian College, Adrian, MI, 1994

Beach's research centers on nationalism, colonialism, and slavery in long eighteenth-century English literature, with particular emphasis on the Restoration and early eighteenth century. His current projects examine British depictions of slavery in North Africa and the Mediterranean, the experiences of African and European slaves, and methodological approaches to comparative slave institutions. He also investigates deserted island narratives in Anglo-American literature and post-colonial/feminist rewritings of canonical British texts, integrating literary theory with historical analysis of colonial power structures.

His publications (2013-2021) reveal consistent interdisciplinary engagement with trauma studies, comparative slavery, and cross-cultural encounters in early modern contexts. Beach employs nuanced analysis of literary form to explore psychological coercion in slave narratives, sexual slavery in Ottoman contexts, and colonial representations in Restoration drama, contributing significantly to discourses on Mediterranean and Atlantic slave systems within eighteenth-century scholarship.