Disability Studies Research Articles

“It’s weird for the people who aren’t used to it. And I want to make it less weird”: Blindness community bloggers as legitimate voices of their lived experiences

In this study, 19 bloggers from the blindness community discuss the meaning of blogging both for themselves and for other persons within this community. Bloggers with visual impairments, their relatives, and blog editors of blindness organizations are interviewed to answer the following questions: (1) What motivates people from the blindness community to still use blogs? (2) How does blogging enable the blindness community to shape their identity and share their lived experiences? (3) How do people with visual impairments and their allies see the future of blogs? Using critical disability studies to interpret the findings, we argue that blogs are a significant form of communication and awareness-raising for the blindness community, as well as enhancing the identity of members of the blindness community. The analysis of the interviews shows that visually impaired people’s participation in blogging changes their self-perception in a positive way, as well as others’ perceptions of blindness. According to the study participants, bloggers with visual impairment and their allies consider themselves more knowledgeable about the topic of blindness because their blogs communicate authentic lived experiences. Overall, the participants are generally optimistic about the future of blogging for the benefit of the blindness community.

University's disability studies faculty research link between disability and incarceration

Faculty in the Rutgers University–Newark's Disability Studies program have researched the link between disability status/classifications and incarceration (https://bit.ly/48ixYXp). The experts argue that disability and special education play a significant role in the “special ed to prison pipeline.”

The Bionic Body: Disability, Technology and Posthumanism

This paper looks at the new field of the critical posthuman disability studies and its potential to provide theoretical framework for critical theory’s engagement with modern technologies. How the concept of the bionic body affects representation of the disabled in contemporary culture and, in turn, how representation of the disabled body affects the changing boundaries of what is and what isn’t considered ‘human.’ Historically, the human body, as represented and defined on stage and in art, has maintained a strictly defined visual integrity. Anything not shaped as ‘human’ was typically deemed monstrous (from hybrid mythological creatures to severely disabled ‘elephant men’). Simultaneously, the category of ‘human’ was used to circumscribe the boundaries of belonging and the categories of valuation: some groups, including the disabled were deemed ‘sub-human’ and designated to either be disposed of (as the carrier of ‘life unworthy of life’) or, if possible, to approximate the ‘human’ body. (Romanska 2019: 92-93). Until very recently, the goal of the prosthetics industry was to create limbs that would serve as visual stand-ins for missing limbs. Similarly, the technological capacities of prosthetic limbs were delineated by human capacities: the disabled were to be given as much ‘abilities’ as the non-disabled, but no more. However, this perception of what the disabled body can and should do has changed with technological progress: not only do the newest prosthetics often look as ‘unhuman’ as possible, but their capacities put into question the capacities and limits of the non-disabled body. All of these and other issues that have emerged in recent years at the crossroads of posthumanism, disability, and biomimicry have led to the development of posthuman disability studies, which tries to untangle and reconceptualize the ethical, legal and philosophical boundaries of human enhancement, species belonging, life and death, and human rights. The posthuman biomimicry, and the prosthetic aspects of digital and AI technologies presupposes a form of disabling of the human body: body without any connection to some type of machine is an inferior body.  In this context, understanding the historical dynamics, critical, philosophical, and ethical debates that have dominated disability studies can provide a framework to how we reconceptualize our posthuman, hybrid future in which our existence with the machines that redefine previous hierarchies is inevitable.  

Cripping the Story of Overcoming: An Analysis of the Discourses and Practices of Self-Regulation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)

This paper applies crip theory (McRuer, 2006, 2018) as well as other key conceptual tools from disabled childhood studies (Runswick-Cole et al., 2018) and disability studies in education (Cousik & Maconochie, 2017) as a tactic intended to question and resist the story of overcoming as it manifests itself within the discourses and practices of self-regulation in early learning classrooms. This paper offers a brief overview of the range of self-regulation strategies enacted within educational settings in Ontario, Canada, that purport to support young children in overcoming themselves on their way to normalcy. This paper also engages in crip theory as a strategy to both question and disrupt the taken for granted assumption that self-regulation entails a return towards or a sustaining of the efficient and productive neoliberal individual in school systems. Finally, this paper considers how we might not only invite but embrace the disruptions that occur when embodied differences refuse to be overcome by demands to self-regulate. Ultimately, a key aim of this paper is to resist how discourses and practices of self-regulation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) establish the overcoming narrative as a means to cure, fix or exclude embodied differences while contemplating the vibrant possibilities embedded within learning with and from disabled childhoods.

Exploring the social determinants of health from the perspectives of people with spinal cord injuries: A disability studies approach

The social determinants of health is an internationally recognized approach to analyzing the impact of non-medical factors on individual health. However, disability is mostly associated with inherent vulnerability without recognition of the social factors. The goal of this qualitative study is to examine the lived experiences of persons living with spinal cord injury (SCI) in coping and managing their health and functioning and to explore an interaction between their embodied experiences and structural issues that contribute to health and wellbeing of people with spinal cord injuries. A thematic analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews generated three themes that highlighted the tensions between the materiality of disability and the barriers associated with stigma, between the self-management strategies and the healthcare access, and finally between access to the formal supports and the invisible costs of living with a spinal cord injury. The findings emphasize the need to re-evaluate public health approaches, recognize the linkages between inequalities linked to disability, and incorporate an embodiment lens from a disability justice perspective.

A SWOT: Thematic Analysis of Pedagogical Practices at Inclusive School of Pakistan

In Pakistan, where the subject of special/inclusive education is still taboo, there is a need to promote inclusivity in education. However, the journey begins at the grassroots level by accommodating children with disabilities in a mainstream setup at the primary level. This paper presents the findings of an exploratory research study conducted in an inclusive private primary school in Karachi, Pakistan. This case study research draws on the pedagogical practices of classroom teachers in a private primary inclusive school in Karachi where children with disabilities study alongside their peers who do not have special educational needs or disabilities. The research study aimed to explore the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threat factors that could optimize the teaching and learning process of children with special educational needs (CWSN) or children with disabilities (CWD) in the context of an inclusive school located in Karachi, Pakistan. Through an analysis of 16 semi-structured interviews and multiple classroom and field observations, teachers’ understandings of their school’s institutional values and their pedagogical practices to accommodate children with disabilities and inclusion were explored. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using a SWOT–thematic qualitative method. The results of the SWOT analysis indicate how an inclusive school caters to the strengths of CWD and provides them with opportunities to sustain themselves in an educational setup.

Intersectionality, childhood disability and rurality: What does rural life mean for disabled children and their families?

AbstractThe specific intention of this article is to question how rural life may affect everyday issues of concern for disabled children and their families, including access to services, social connectedness and quality of life. A theoretical frame of critical disability studies and intersectionality is taken up for this work. As critical disability studies scholarship forges productive theoretical alliances with other social agendas linked to identity, such as feminism and critical race theory, it is accordingly insistent upon going beyond a siloed fixation on disability. A defining contention is that disability ought not to be the sole focus of theoretical and socio‐political agendas that seek to solve the problems that disabled communities face. It is therefore only fitting that any treatment of the convergence of childhood disability and rurality might draw intersectionality theory into its conceptual remit. As such, this article presents a reading of disability, intersectionality and rurality through a critical disability studies lens, recognising critical disability studies as a theoretical methodology. To substantiate the theoretical component of the article, a scoping review method is employed to source literature through a replicable, transparent approach. The article encourages a better understanding about how rurality may affect the lives of disabled children and their families whilst recognising that disability is not the only important identity position to consider.

Dissembling Bodily and Literary Wholeness: Centering the Spirit in Disability Studies through Black Women’s Writing

In this article, I analyze Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Erna Brodber’s Myal in order to demonstrate that African-derived spiritual systems are central in Black women’s fictional depictions and theorizing of healing and disability. I argue that the violence of what Moya Bailey terms misogynoir is writ on Black women’s body, mind, and spirit—the latter of which is absent in disability studies frameworks yet central to healing and liberation in this literature. These writings present a syncretized spirituality drawn from African Diasporic, African Indigenous, and Indigenous American religious beliefs that have a more capacious understanding of wholeness and wellness to reimagine healing in ways that make space for a diversity of bodymindspirits. Black spiritual practice enables self-love and acceptance of disabled Black womanhood, and the Word, Nommo, bestows spiritual healing power.

Co-healthism in Health at Every Size®-aligned TikTok activism: Transforming the definition of healthism via feminist-of-color disability studies theorizing

ABSTRACT This article is a feminist-of-color disability studies-oriented TikTok critical discourse analysis of 100 popular Health at Every Size® (HAES®) TikToks. It evaluates the power relations surrounding how HAES® frameworks are disseminated on TikTok and unpacks the implications for fat liberation. HAES® frameworks of care capacitate the eradication of medical fatmisia and the weight-centered health paradigm. While popular among online fat activists, HAES® frameworks have been widely accused of perpetuating healthism. My analysis makes clear how HAES® discourse is often steeped in ableist, white supremacist, and colonial healthism. Through this analysis, I ultimately argue that the definition of healthism needs to shift to center ableism, white supremacy, and colonialism, as well as the co-constituting nature of how systems of oppression aggregate to weaponize health against those with embodiments marked as “unhealthy.” I argue that this shift is necessary to produce analyses committed to radical solidarity. I mark this shift by coining and utilizing the term co-healthism. To demonstrate the need for my argument, I organize the results into three themes: healthist ableism, healthist white supremacy, and healthist colonialism in HAES® discourse. In the discussion, I clarify the co-constitutive nature of these themes and argue for the shift from healthism to co-healthism. I also define the concept and explain its methodological potentialities.

A Neurodiverse Perspective of the Eighteenth Century

From a disability studies perspective, the article seeks to contextualize the attainment of cultural and social capital within the Enlightenment. This work situates itself as part of the disability studies scholarship on cognitive impairment and neurological differences in the eighteenth century that has emerged in the last two decades as well as within the growing field of academic studies of autism and the humanities. Building on this recent work, the article analyzes Charlotte Lennox’s representation of Arabella’s atypical sociability in The Female Quixote (1752) alongside the court case of Hugh Blair of Borgue (1708–1760s), who was deemed an “idiot” within the discourse of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the article examines the emerging rhetoric of what we now term neurotypical privilege and its intersection with gender and social position. The conclusion is that while Hugh’s and Arabella’s perceived shortage of cultural capital affects their “value” on the market, their unconventional social skills can be interpreted as subversive.

Built to Destroy

David Cronenberg’s cult classic horror film The Brood explores the breakdown of the nuclear family as the impotent Father fails to protect the Child from the destructive threat of the Mother. The article argues that the film employs a misogynistic, eugenic gaze which compels viewers to perceive the “antagonist” Nola as a violent madwoman whose actions necessitate her destruction by the forces of professional male rationality. In constructing such a woman, the film’s eugenic gaze encourages co-identification with a cast of professional men who set out to destroy the very monster their misapprehension has helped to create. Building on scholarship in feminist film theory and disability studies, the article elaborates the many eugenic gazes operant in The Brood and concludes with a speculative reimagining that attends to the utter lack of care Nola receives as she struggles to extricate herself from intergenerational neglect and abuse.

Petrified

Set in a rural mining town in nineteenth-century Spain, Benito Pérez Galdós’s novel Marianela enfolds a complex mediation on the relationship between humans ( bios ) and stones ( geos ) in the wake of industrial modernization. At the heart of this natural world are Marianela, an unsightly lumpen-proletariat, her blind bourgeois companion Pablo, and Celipín, a child miner, all raised in proximity to a zinc sulfate mine and all compared to the geological matter of the earth. Working at the intersection of disability studies, ecocriticism, and theories of biopolitics, the article examines the relationship between disability and rurality. The novel’s unconventional treatment of disabled and socially marginalized characters as human stone sheds light on a process the article terms petrification: the mutual debilitation of the bodies of nature and human bodies, exploited by capitalism and ableism alike.

Integration of a Disability Lens as Prerequisite for Inclusive Higher Education

PURPOSE. Occidental higher education often approaches disability as a disparate issue, failing to recognize that it is part of human diversity. Such an approach hinders inclusive education because it overlooks how disability is intertwined with other identities and concepts of exclusion. The overarching aim of this paper is to enhance understanding of (intersecting) disabling processes within education policy and practice and the impact thereof on students; and to raise educators’ awareness about how integration of knowledge from Disability Studies within pedagogy and their daily interaction with students, can positively influence disabled students’ wellbeing, their study opportunities and aid the overall process of inclusion. APPROACH. This paper offers a disability lens by (1) presenting a literature overview from a Disability Studies (DS) perspective about disability and exclusionary phenomena, in particular disablism and ableism; (2) substantiating how a current focus on accessibility hinders actual inclusion; (3) analysing a case-study through the presented perspective with attention to Dutch contextual factors. For the case-study, the first author and ‘Tess’ engaged in regular conversations during a year in which Tess shared her experiences as a student of higher education. In this paper, a selection of these experiences is presented from a reflexive perspective and with application of the presented frameworks. With this, the complex impact of exclusionary processes on interactions between students, educators and on the organization of university involved (social) events is illustrated. FINDINGS. The lack of nuanced, fluid and intersectional approaches to disability within mainstream education hinders the recognition of (epistemic) injustices. Exclusionary processes and practices in higher education remain unacknowledged, although they negatively impact disabled students and block their epistemic contribution. Moreover, the continued focus on accessibility hinders implementation of the international convention on the rights of persons with disabilities and deflects attention from the fact that inclusive education requires systemic change and a multi-layered approach. KEY MESSAGE. The current trajectory of disability inclusion is counterproductive without true systemic change. Integration of the presented disability lens is imperative for truly intersectional approaches to inclusion and offers educators a way to positively influence students’ wellbeing and identity development, even when policy changes are not yet achieved. Points of interest: Knowledge and attitudes about disability in higher education systems, in policies and practice, often do not portray disability from the perspective of disabled people themselves. There is also a lack of understanding how disability is part of human diversity and is intertwined with other identity aspects. Because higher education often focusses on including disabled people in existing systems by way of individual accommodations rather than on changing the design of the system, disabled students experience various forms of exclusion, varying from opportunities to study to the way they are approached by educators, that effect their wellbeing. The usefulness of disability studies theory is illustrated by applying them to the experiences of ‘Tess’, demonstrating how her personal and professional life was influenced by them. We argue that policies need to change and that educators themselves can work on true inclusion by recognising disability as diversity and by integrating up-to-date knowledge from the perspective of disabled people themselves in their approaches.

Adapted Physical Activity Scholarship: Evolving From Corrective to Inclusion and Anti-Ableist

Kinesiology and adapted physical activity (APA) share a common history rooted in the medical model approach to physical activity, movement, and the human body. The evolution of APA was influenced by these early roots and later by special-education legislation, sensory-motor perspectives, inclusion movement, and the disability-rights movement. Originally identified as adapted physical education, APA emerged as a professional field and an academic discipline. Since the 1950s, the research and scholarship has increased and cuts across the specialization areas (subdisciplines) of kinesiology. The multidisciplinary nature of APA scholarship has also reached beyond the discipline of kinesiology informed by disability studies and sociology. Reflection about APA and kinesiology reveals the ableist nature of the medical model, which informed early professional practice and scholarship. Thus, it is critical that APA and kinesiology engage in anti-ableist scholarship to better understand human physical activity and movement inclusive of individuals with disabilities.

“Unreasonable” Bodies: Thinking Beyond Accommodation in Workplace Lactation Law and Policy

Purpose: This article investigates why workplace lactation law, guidance, and policy may fail to support women. It examines the epistemological and ethical bases of technical communication governing Virginia K???12 teachers and considers complex material conditions and opportunities for social justice intervention.Method: I employed a qualitative critical discourse analysis of three Virginia codes governing workplace lactation and one state human resources guidance document, examining their interaction with the Federal Labor Standards Act and 10 local school district policies. I drew on Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) social justice scholarship, disability studies, and apparent feminism scholarship to interpret my findings.Results: Documents governing workplace lactation are based on an ableist mindset that marginalizes women’s bodies. They prioritize an ethic of expediency, draw on medical knowledge while ignoring women’s knowledge and material conditions, and perpetuate systemic inequities.Conclusion: To promote social justice, technical communicators should continue questioning the epistemological and ethical bases of laws, policies, and guidance since documents informed by knowledge and ideologies that devalue the people they purport to protect will fail in implementation. Local policymakers need not wait for institutional changes but can look for opportunities to reimagine design approaches and intervene to create supportive, inclusive workplaces.

드라마 <우리들의 블루스>에 재현된 장애인의 완전 통합 방안 연구

This study critically analyzes inclusion strategies for people with disability in the drama “Our Blues” from an interdisciplinary perspective in cultural and disability studies, evaluating both their significance and limitations. The study shows that Our Blues naturally portrays person with disability as members of the Purung Village community, presenting an ideal model of inclusion with non-disabled members. Our Blues goes beyond the stereotypical portrayal of disabled families, showcasing diverse realities and emphasizing the significant process of creating new families with a disabled spouse or spouse with a disabled family member. It authentically depicts disability with disabled actors portraying characters having similar disabilities, emphasizing the closeness of their lives and cultures instead of just mimicking disability. However, it should address the drama's limitations, especially in restricting the independence of character with developmental disability and portraying person with disability and her family as objects of sympathy and pity. The research findings provide valuable insights for real-life inclusion of person with disability and suggest ways to enhance the portrayal of disabilities in dramas.

Embodied Listening

In this paper, we propose embodied listening as pedagogical praxis in which we are receptive to how our whole bodies are involved in communicating with each other. Embodied listening disrupts what we call “speech-as-presence”—normative expectations of student participation emphasizing verbal contributions and privileging particular bodies. These expectations contribute to the reproduction of oppressive logics at work in classrooms—racism, hetero-patriarchy, white feminism, masculinism, ableism, colonialism. We argue that embodied listening can serve as a source of knowledge about these logics, supporting transformation of classroom expectations beyond imposed norms. We reflect on our experiences developing embodied listening practices in our undergraduate courses through our observations and students’ own reflections. Our findings demonstrate both the transformative potential of listening in classrooms and the tensions produced as these strategies discomfited students and disrupted classroom norms. Finally, we engage with critical perspectives on listening positionality from Indigenous studies, disability studies, and sound studies towards deepening our understanding of differences and multiplicities in how we listen. We illustrate how we continue to develop ways to incorporate this work in our classrooms and support students in the exhaustive and uncomfortable work of embodied listening and imaginative ways of being in the classroom.

We Are All Monsters: How Deviant Organisms Came to Define Us, by Andrew Mangham

Andrew Mangham’s monograph entitled We Are All Monsters: How Deviant Organisms Came to Define Us (2023, The MIT Press) explores the polyvocal nature of monster science across the period 1750-1900 and its dialogue with nineteenth-century literature. Mangham’s “monsters,” as defined in biological sciences, are “organisms … born with at least one permanent physiological defect” (p. 1). Guided by the approach disability studies takes towards the term “disability,” he explores how monster science defines monstrosity “not as a failure, but as an embodiment of, or a cog in the machine of, organic law” (p. 2). Monsters with their corporeal singularities and differences are integral to the laws of nature. They are not “by-products of the laws of natural development which they had failed in varying ways to embody,” but “the adaptive workings and the dynamic forces to which all life forms, normal and abnormal, owe their being” (p. 2). In other words, congenital anomalies or corporeal deviations are structural variations which are not the antithesis of what is “normal” or “natural,” but significations of life’s variety and the ingenuities of nature. Mangham’s choice of literary works from the long nineteenth century helps explore the interplay between monster science and literary or imaginary monsters, emphasizing how they represent monstrosity as central to the interpretation of nature’s diversity and creativity. Offering an in-depth survey of monster science across the period and its literary reverberations in nineteenth-century novels, We Are All Monsters interrogates the causes and meanings of monstrosities with the claim that congenital structural deformities or differences are not failures or violations of nature’s laws, but symbols of vital creativity. With this claim at the center of his work, Mangham explores how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841), and Lucas Malet’s The History of Sir Richard Calmady (1901) engage in dialogue with the ideas developed in monster science and problematize the meanings of difference and normalcy.

Breaking out of the box: increasing the representation of disability within archive science

This article explores the value of archives in increasing the representation of disabled people in social policy, and research narratives, as well as building an identity of the Disabled People’s Movement beyond traditional activism, and the inclusion of young people and marginalised groups within archives. To achieve this, it is vital that archival studies and archival science engage with the conceptual understanding of disability and the different needs of disabled people, beyond the traditional focus on the medical model, to an understanding of the Social and Rights Models. This understanding will help to unify approaches to disability within the archive from both an archival science and humanities perspective to make sure that polices and approaches facilitate the participation and recognition of the wide experiences of disability. This will require re-evaluation of approaches to policy issues such as safeguarding and vulnerability, social media use and whose voice is worthy of preservation. Engagement with the broader field of disability studies in theory and practice offers a way for the field of archive science to address these issues.

Meyer, Abbye E. <i>From Wallflowers to Bulletproof Families: The Power of Disability in Young Adult</i> <i>Narratives</i>. UP of Mississippi, 2022. 204 pages. ISBN: 9781496837585

A common observation in disability studies is that historically, disability has been a unifying marginalisation—the one intersection from which other identities hope for distance or even escape (Mitchell & Snyder 3; Davis 277). Problem novels, often dismissed as an inevitable but undesired aspect of adolescent literature (Miskec & McGee 164), occupy a similar space in studies of youth literature. These texts are often considered representative of young adult literature by those outside of children’s literature studies and are often treated defensively by those of us within it as a stereotype the field must overcome. There is, however, very little scholarship explicitly on problem novels. Abbye E. Meyer’s work, From Wallflowers to Bulletproof Families: The Power of Disability in Young Adult Narratives, offers a new defence and reinterpretation of the problem novel as she asks readers to consider these significant gaps in the literature: “the ways in which disability and young adult literature interact” and “the kinds of power these interactions produce” (12). As an analysis of American representations of disability and adolescence, Meyer’s work is often compelling, especially in its recontextualization of “exemplary” didacticism (Meyer 96). While I do question the conflation of adolescence as disabling in early chapters as potentially overly diagnostic and easily misread (and as a non-American reader I lament the limitations in attributing the “young adult voice” (16) so squarely to Holden Caufield and Esther Greenwood), Meyer’s work is an important contribution to both literary and disability studies as we continue to engage on topics of representation, voice, and crip power.