Research Article| July 01 2021 Identity and Ability: An Interview with Lennard J. Davis Jeffrey J. Williams Jeffrey J. Williams Jeffrey Williams has interviewed more than seventy critics, philosophers, and writers, appearing in journals including the minnesota review, Symploke, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. He has written on the history of the interview, notably “The Rise of the Critical Interview” (New Literary History, 2019). He also writes on contemporary American fiction, the history of modern criticism and theory, and critical university studies. His book, How to Be an Intellectual: Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University (2014), calls for a more public criticism, and he is an editor of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (3rd ed., 2018). He is professor of English and of literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Cultural Politics (2021) 17 (2): 163–174. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8947865 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jeffrey J. Williams; Identity and Ability: An Interview with Lennard J. Davis. Cultural Politics 1 July 2021; 17 (2): 163–174. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-8947865 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsCultural Politics Search Advanced Search By the 1990s critics had shown the ways that race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality shape identity. Yet, as Lennard J. Davis pointed out, disability was largely invisible on the spectrum of identity. With Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (1995) and the anthology The Disabilities Studies Reader (1st ed., 1997; 5th ed., 2016), Davis helped establish the field of disability studies.He further explored the representation and politics of disability in Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions (2002), The End of Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era (2013), and Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the American with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights (2015), a trade book that tells the story of that landmark legislation, as well as the collection Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions (coedited, 2012). More generally, he has argued for a “biocultural” approach in... Issue Section: Articles You do not currently have access to this content.