The Disability Studies Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 041591471X ISBN 13: 9780415914710

Publisher: Routledge, 1997

Synopsis

The Disability Studies Reader collects for the first time representative texts from the newly emerging field of disability studies. People with disabilities comprise fifteen per cent of the population nationally and worldwide, making them the largest physical minority. Yet they have been marginalized not only in society at large but within the discourses of knowledge. This volume represents a major advance in presenting the most important writings about disability, with an emphasis on those writers working from a materialist and postmodern perspective. Drawing together experts in cultural studies, literary criticism, sociology, biology, the visual arts, pedagogy, and postcolonial studies, the collection attempts to provide a comprehensive approach to the issue of disability by problematizing the notion of the normal body, revealing ableist assumptions in the politics and poetics of social and physical space, sexuality, language, textuality, access to resources, and public policy decisions concerning the body. Contributors: Adrianne Asch, Douglas Baynton, Bradley S. Berens, Lois Bragg, Lerita M. Coleman, Terry Collins, Dirksen Bauman, Jennifer Drake, Martha Edwards, Michelle Fine, Anne Finger, Erving Goffman, Harlan Hahn, David Heavey, Ruth Hubbard, Sue Kroeger, Harlan Lane, David Mitchel, Michael Oliver, Oliver Sacks, Marj Schneider, Susan Sontag, Alan Sutherland, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Sanjeev Upretty, Susan Wendell, Martha Winzer.

About this title

Review

"The Disability Studies Reader is a classic of invention, intervention, and interdiciplinarity. Contesting at every juncture the arbitrariness of signs such as "normal, "natural," "healthy," and "able bodied," the collection rewrites epistemologies of pedagogy and research long considered "standard." The work's judgments are rejuvenating, its observations insightful, its creativity a gift."―Houston Baker, English, Vanderbilt University

"Over the past 15 years, disability studies have grown not only along with, but because of, Lennard Davis's Disability Studies Reader. This anthology provides a flexible, advanced overview of the state of scholarship on disability in the humanities and reaffirms the DSR’s position as the "must have" text for those venturing into disability studies at any level."―Robert A. Wilson, Philosophy, University of Alberta

"Professor Davis has compiled an outstanding selection of essays from leading American and international disability scholars and activists. The book is a comprehensive survey of disability culture, politics, identity, history, and fiction that can both enlighten the educated student of disability studies and serve as an introduction to the disability experience."―Paul S. Miller, Law, University of Washington

From the Back Cover

The second edition of The Disability Studies Reader builds and improves upon the classic first edition, which has sold well over 6000 copies since 1999. As a field, disability studies burst onto the scene across the social sciences and humanities in the 1990s, and the first edition of the reader gathered the best work that had been written on the subject, including essays by famous authors such as Susan Sontag and Erving Goffman. The new edition is more global in its coverage and adds material on genetic testing, the human genome, queer studies, and issues in developing countries. The size of the audience has grown since the first edition's publication, and the second edition's new material will make it even more useful for courses on the subject. Courses on the subject have mushroomed in the past ten years, and can now be found across the social sciences, humanities, and behavioral sciences.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 041591471X
• ISBN 13: 9780415914710
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 464
• Editor: Davis Lennard J.