Disability Studies and New Directions in Eighteenth-Century German Studies

Abstract

Disability Studies and New Directions in Eighteenth-Century German Studies Eleoma Bodammer The Forum topic "(New) Directions" is an opportunity to draw attention to the need to integrate disability studies more into Goethe scholarship and research on eighteenth-century German literature. However, going in a new direction within the discipline should not only mean an impulse for discussion; it should have a transformative impact that causes positive changes in the place where the discipline is housed, namely, at the university itself. My thoughts on this new direction therefore play out against the need for and move toward broader, more inclusive perspectives in the field of German studies and its institutional frameworks. Admittedly, I reflect on this topic from the distinct perspective of German in the United Kingdom. As German studies expands to explore wider and newer fields, academics are using the many opportunities available to openly and publicly reflect on this transformation, for example, via blogs, social media, and in new spaces in academic journals, such as the Forum section of the Goethe Yearbook. In such spaces, amplifying the voices of those with protected characteristics (in the UK, the Equality Act 2010 lists these as age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation) and reflecting on positionality is also part of this new approach to diversifying both research and the curriculum. Furthermore, as with other "expanding" German studies pathways (e.g., gender and race) that address underrepresentation, a more emphatic focus on disability should be intersectional and can also have a transformative and inclusive impact on university curricula, pedagogy, assessment, and course design. Disability studies and literary disability studies scholars are often agents of change and academic activists. As such, they are sensitive to the real-world relevance of their research focus. Whether identifying as disabled, not disclosing, or nondisabled allies and advocates, they often bring a commitment to challenging prejudice, stigma, injustice, and bias in relation to disability, to supporting disability pride and visibility, and to amplifying the voices of disabled people. These individuals can actively bring about institutional change by creating opportunities for disabled people (or people with disabilities) to teach and conduct research, and by educating the next generation of students to use disability theory for literary study and to be knowledgeable about inclusive terms and ableist structures.1 Disability studies scholars [End Page 307] can transform work environments both within and outside the academy, for example, by fighting for civil rights, accommodations and adjustments, physical access, safe spaces, content warnings, universal and equitable design, fair assessment, etc., and by attending to language that may intend to assure fairness and "objectivity," but nevertheless often fails to secure inclusiveness.2 The academic discipline of disability studies generally seeks to go beyond research, aiming instead to serve as a holistic approach that informs many aspects of academic life. Much can be gained from examining the eighteenth-century concept of Behinderung before it evolved into a collective idea in the twentieth century through examining period-specific uses of alternative words and concepts. According to Felix Welti in Behinderung und Rehabilitation im sozialen Rechtsstaat (Disability and Rehabilitation in the Social Constitutional State, 2005), the terms Behinderung and Behinderte have only been in use in the modern-day sense of disability and disabled people in Germany since around 1919, just after World War I, after being popularized by the Otto-PerlBund, a self-help group for physically disabled people in Berlin. Welti maintains that the word Gebrechen (affliction) was the term most commonly used as an overarching term for disability prior to the modern era.3 Grimms' Wörterbuch defines "Behinderung" and "behindern" as preventing someone from doing something (in the sense of "verhindern"), deriving from the Latin "impedimentum" and "impedire."4 Similarly, the online Adelung dictionary classifies "behindern" as to impede, in the context of legal impediments.5 The online Goethe Wörterbuch defines "Behinderung" in relation to its use in a theater context for an incapacity caused, for example, by illness, and clarifies the meaning of "behindern" through the example of preventing others from developing or educating themselves.6 Alternative words, such as the word "Invalide" are...