Jennifer Esmail was awarded one of the most prestigious academic awards in Canada: the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature. Esmail’s expertise is Victorian literature, with research interests in deaf and disability studies, animal studies, and the history of media and technology. Her book, Reading Victorian Deafness: Signs and Sounds in Victorian Literature and Culture, examines Victorian understandings of deafness and sign language, including the influential “Oralist” movement that forced deaf people to speak and lipread in English instead of sign.

Jennifer Esmail
Assistant Professor,
Department of English and Film Studies