Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. "The Disability Studies Reader edited by Lennard J. Davis is to the field of Disability Studies what the Norton anthologies are to literature. 2013. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 2012. Nielsen, Kim. Schweik, Susan. It is an essential disability studies journal for scholars whose work concentrates on the portrayal of disability. While the social model has served as a core principle of the field, as disability studies matured, leading theorists have called for a more nuanced approach. Instead, they argued that disability is produced as much by cultural and environmental factors as by bodily conditions, and have focused mainly on the former. Disability Studies is a small but growing field of theorization regarding the role of disability in identity politics. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Chen, Mel. Kafer, Alison. Instead, he argued for an approach that raises awareness of how many familiar metaphors and narrative devices are “grounded in the underrecognized and undertheorized facts of bodily difference” (2005: 570). SAGE Publications, Inc. Gary L. Albrecht, Katherine Delores Seelman, Michael Bury 2002. shtml. The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public. Murray, Stuart. A disability studies perspective examines how disability is socially constructed in society and can shed light on how literature reflects the social conditions within which it was written. In Enforcing Normalcy (1995), Lennard J. Davis put normalcy on the table for critical investigation, much as scholars in critical race studies had begun studying whiteness, a previously invisible, unremarked concept. New York: Vintage. Scholars examine how disability is perceived in the social and natural sciences, history, society, and literature. “Seeing What We Know: Disability and Theories of Metaphor.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4 (1): 33–54. Couser, G. Thomas. Calling their theory “narrative prosthesis” because such narratives employ disability as a sort of crutch, they showed how it functions in works as disparate as Melville’s Moby‐Dick (1851) and Dunn’s Geek Love (1989). Extending Davis’s and Garland‐Thomson’s ideas, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder argued in Narrative Prosthesis (2000) that canonical authors frequently rely on disability as a narrative device both to give their fictions energy and ultimately to reaffirm normalcy in their works. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. ), Publisher: SensePublishers, Year: 2015 Bloomington: Indiana University Press. While in the 1980s disability studies was dominated by social science approaches, in the 1990s literary and cultural criticism took on a prominent and leading role. Linton reminded readers that the social model created the broad alliance that helped disabled people to achieve important legislative victories that changed for better access, inclusion, and protections from discrimination. Others have resisted such a formulation. When literary scholars turned their attention to disability, they discovered it, like gender and race, all around them (Garland‐Thomson 2013: 916). Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Beauvoir, Simone de. At the same time, some scholars in literary disability studies have chosen to study literary representations of specific kinds of disability. The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum’s America. http://dredf. Adding nuance and deep expertise to the discourse, Disability Studies and Biblical Literature shows us how superficial and general has been much of the previous discussion of religious attitudes toward people with disabilities in the western world. Scholars in the field seemed to move to become more open to rich varieties of disability metaphor in narratives. Indeed, the disability movement sometimes humorously uses “TAB” (for “temporarily able‐bodied”) to describe non‐disabled people. In this way, the very structure of the nineteenth‐century novel upholds normalcy. 'This book assembles an impressive array of scholars whose collective work changes the terrain of disability studies and biblical scholarship. Garland‐Thomson, Rosemarie. The Ohio State University Disability Studies Program, established in 1997, emphasizes interdisciplinary and intersectional work in disability studies. “Disability and Narrative.” PMLA 120 (2): 568–76. Foucault, Michel. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. McRuer, Robert. (3MB), Publisher: Indiana University Press, Year: 2011 Disability studies emerged out of the disability civil rights movement in the late twentieth century. In addition to disabled characters, scholars have called attention to the frequent metaphorical use of disability, which adds to the meanings of disability in texts. Disability Theory. Siebers, Tobin. New York: New York University Press. Probing representations of such characters has become a staple of literary disability studies, revealing hidden patterns and expanding the way canonical narratives are read. ), Series: Routledge Studies in Science, Technology and Society 11, Publisher: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Year: 1995 New York: Vintage. Nice and informative article, it helps me to get an idea about litrary disability studies. ), Publisher: New York University Press, Year: 2015 ), Benjamin Reiss (ed. In discussing passing and other strategies used by stigmatized people to win acceptance, he implicitly pointed out how the significance of disability is socially formed and can vary by time and place. Now, through books like Stuart Murray’s Representing Autism (2008), that gap has begun to be addressed. For example, some culturally Deaf people who use sign language see themselves as members of a proud linguistic minority and not in any way disabled (other Deaf signers, acknowledging the obstacles they typically face in a hearing society, consider themselves both). Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions. In addition, Davis (1995) equated the very act of reading, which is typically silent and visual, with deafness, arguing that writing and decoding texts is bound up in disability. Tom Shakespeare, while saying the social model was crucial, called for more sophisticated methods that recognize disability as a phenomenon “requiring different levels of analysis and intervention, ranging from the medical to the socio‐political” (Shakespeare 2006: 204). ), Series: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights, Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Year: 2013 Early Literary Disability Studies and Normalcy. While the field has always been interdisciplinary and cognizant of other identity‐based disciplines—for example, in using other identity theories, in advocating for rights, or in Garland‐Thomson’s effort to bring disability studies and feminism together back in 1997—recent works have shown a renewed commitment to exploring how disability intersects with other forms of identity. Enforcing Normalcy: Deafness, Disability, and the Body. ), Series: Interdisciplinary disability studies, Author(s): Rachel Adams (ed. David Theo Goldberg and Ato Quayson, 217–30. In contrast to literary critics in feminist or critical race studies, those in disability studies thus have less opportunity to recapture past writers of their group. (2MB), Author(s): Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone, Carol Thomas, Author(s): Gary L. Albrecht, Katherine Delores Seelman, Michael Bury, Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, Year: 2001 In addition, they sometimes investigated how depictions relate to their historical moment, showing how authors create, perpetuate, or contest the attitudes of their time. Notably, some disability studies scholars have claimed certain canonical writers as disabled, even if the authors themselves did not view themselves in such terms during their lifetimes. Such intersectional approaches helped disability studies to emerge as a consequential, exciting intellectual pursuit with an activist orientation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (2MB), Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US, Year: 2015 As in other identity‐based fields, life writing has an important place in disability studies because it gives individual real‐world perspectives from within the community. “Looking Awry: Tropes of Disability in Postcolonial Writing.” Relocating Postcolonialism, ed. New York: The Modern Language Association. Journal of Disability Studies ‘ Journal of Disability Studies ’ is an International, multidisciplinary, peer reviewed / refereed open access journal. To be sure, the field has had fractures, debates, and problems, but such controversies often add to its richness. “Cripping Consensus: Disability Studies at the Intersection.” American Literary History 28 (2): 433–53. Above all, disability studies teach us that, in reality, "normal" and "abnormal" are just a fantasy, a construction of what a culture values and, especially, of how it expects (or requires) its citizens to look, to function, and to be. ), David Serlin (ed. In Thomas Couser’s words: “autobiography warrants study not just as all too rare first‐person testimony about disabling conditions but also as potentially powerful counter discourse to the prevailing discourse of disability” (Couser 2002: 109). Robert Hurley. 2000. (5MB), Author(s): Blake Howe, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Neil Lerner, Joseph Straus (eds. 2011. (3MB), Series: Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Year: 2014 For her part, in Animacies (2012) Mel Chen brings together biopolitics, race, sexuality, and disability. 1998. New York: Columbia University Press. Cambridge. Several influential scholars working in the 1960s and 1970s provided intellectual groundwork for the field, even if they did not write solely about disability or offer a vision of liberation for disabled people. Focusing on representations of disability, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies publishes a wide variety of textual analyses that are informed by disability theory … New York: Routledge. Disability studies considers disability in political, aesthetic, ethical, and cultural contexts, among others. (2MB), Author(s): David J. Connor, Jan W. Valle, Chris Hale, Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., Year: 2014 Leader Ed Roberts called disabled people “one of the largest minority groups in the nation,” emphasizing their new feeling of a shared identity (Nielsen 2012: 168). Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. (1MB), Series: Routledge Studies in Cultural History 14, Author(s): Elsayed Elshabrawy Ahmad Hassanein (auth. He described how, starting in the nineteenth century, bodies seen as problems were sequestered, controlled, diagnosed, and otherwise socially managed. 2007. Meanwhile, a disability lens often gave back by usefully revising or correcting previously accepted concepts. These endeavors gave disability studies scholars models and parallels to use and helped the field to mature quickly. Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health brings together scholars working in disability studies, mad studies, feminist theory, Indigenous studies, postcolonial theory, Jewish literature, queer studies, American studies, trauma studies, and comics to create an intersectional community of scholarship in literary disability studies of mental health. 2016. In the early years of the field, disability studies scholars were sometimes faulted for overlooking cognitive disability. In one chapter, Garland‐Thomson, building on sociologist Robert Bogdan’s 1988 analysis of freak shows, demonstrated how they aided the development of normate‐ based thinking. New York: New York University Press. In her 1998 manifesto for the field, Claiming Disability, Simi Linton summed up the most important benefits of using the social model. Literary scholars made the field more visible and invigorated thinking not only about identity and aesthetics, but also about social attitudes toward disability, ethics, and human rights (Hall 2016: 53). It can serve as hermeneutical impasse, as in Ondaatje’s The English Patient (1992), where the man’s acute burns ensures he remains unknown throughout the story. In Aesthetic Nervousness a few years later, he put his advice into practice, examining disability in works by African authors such as Coetzee and Soyinka. Disability Studies aims to make scholars, students, and contemporary citizens aware of the ideas of disabilities prevalent throughout society. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s insights, in Extraordinary Bodies (1997) Rosemarie Garland‐Thomson coined the term “normate” to describe an idealized position that has dominance and authority in society (Garland‐Thomson 1997: 8). For example, in her 2001 Sideshow U.S.A., Rachel Adams not only explored the historical freak show, but also its appearance in twentieth‐century film, photography, and literature by authors such as McCullers and Morrison. 2014. A third element of disability in literature is structural. To people accustomed to thinking of disability as a medical problem located in an individual’s body (the overwhelmingly dominant view of disability since the nineteenth century), such an approach may come as a surprise. ), Publisher: SensePublishers, Year: 2015 “Infinities of Forms: Disability Figures and Artistic Traditions.” In Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ed. According to one organizer, a “high point” came when civil rights icon Julian Bond visited (Cone 1997). More recently, in The Secret Life of Stories (2016), Bérubé connected intellectual disability with motive, temporality, and self‐ awareness in narratives from The Sound and the Fury to Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983) to the Harry Potter series (1997–2007). As we will see, the field has made some progress in these areas, but more work remains to be done. Review of Disability Studies ), Marianne Schulze (ed. The fourth edition of the reader has just been released in February. Cathy J. Schlund-Vials (ed. Throughout, the activists made themselves collectively visible to the public, revealing what had previously been largely hidden. Guide for students in English Department courses. 2011. Cassuto, Leonard. Adams, Rachel. Like feminist, critical race, and queer approaches to literature and culture, disability studies relates to a specific group: in this case, disabled people, who make up approximately 15 percent of the world population and are among the most poor and disempowered groups globally. Feminist, Queer, Crip. In 2002, Sharon Snyder called attention to how are such authors are typically seen as succeeding despite impairments. New York: Columbia University Press. (2MB), Author(s): Matthew Wappett, Katrina Arndt (eds. Use current and former terms e.g. They displayed exceptional bodies to the public for profit. ), Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US, Year: 2013 Again, disability studies opened fresh approaches to literary investigation. And natural sciences, History, society, and Rosemarie Garland‐Thomson, 109–17 rights movement in the late century. 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