Ben Daniel Bascom

Ben Daniel Bascom is an Assistant Professor of English at Ball State University, specializing in early and 19th-century American literature and LGBTQ studies. He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research employs queer studies methodologies to analyze power structures, gender, and sexuality in historical contexts. Currently completing his book Feeling Singular: Queer Masculinities in the Early United States, supported by NEH and Penn State University grants, he explores failed citizenship narratives in 18th-century life writing.

His second project, Eccentric Queers: Celebrity and Debility in Nineteenth-Century America, examines mental health and eccentricity through literary and material culture, recently awarded a 2023 Library Company of Philadelphia fellowship. His work appears in American Literary History and Arizona Quarterly.

• Awards: NEH Grant (2019), Penn State First Book Fellowship (2018), Library Company Fellowship (2023)
• Office: RB 297 | Phone: 765-285-8580

His research bridges queer theory with material text studies, focusing on how contemporary mental health discourse intersects with historical representations of deviance and marginalization.