The Disability Studies Reader - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415953340 ISBN 13: 9780415953344

Publisher: Routledge, 2006

Synopsis

The Disability Studies Reader collects, for the first time, representative texts from the newly emerging field of disability studies. 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 postmodernist perspective.

Drawing together experts in cultural studies, literary criticism, sociology, biology, the visual arts, pedagogy and post-colonial studies, the collection provides a comprehensive approach to the issue of disability. Contributors include Erving Goffman, Susan Sontag, Michelle Fine and Susan Wendell.

About this title

About the Author

Lennard J. Davis is Professor of English, Disability Studies, and Medical Education at the University of Illionis at Chicago. His is author of, among other books, Enforcing Normalcy and Bending Over Backwards.

From the Back Cover

"This is an indispensable collection, bringing together foundational arguments in disability studies and provocative new work from emerging young scholars in the field. If you're curious as to why (and how) disability studies has stimulated so much debate in the humanities, The Disability Studies Reader is a great place to start finding out."
--Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Penn State University

"There is simply no area of contemporary life-- be it medical, economic, educational, juridical, athletic, architectural, culinary, recreation, entertainment--that goes unaddressed in the disability studies literature. Just when you thought that there was nothing new to say about social construction, difference, the performative, the universal, the particular and the body, disability studies comes along to demonstrate both the theoretical and practical urgencies to which these and other too often abstract terms really refer. If you've been hearing about disability studies, but didn't quite know what to make of it, this is the anthology for you."
--Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law, Florida International University

"A classic just got even better! Only a few disciplines can claim a founding text. For disability studies, with its far-reaching implications for other fields, this is it. It all starts--and re-starts in a superb second edition--right here."
--David B. Morris, author of The Culture of Pain

"This revised edition demonstrates the significant evolution of the field. Greater attention to such vital issues as globalization, gender, critical race studies, and cultural constructions appear in cogent new essays that enhance and complement the collection. As with the original Disability Studies Reader , this edition challenges its readers with pioneering studies of theoretical models and the politics of disability.
--Susan Burch, author of Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II

"This collection of scholarly essays strikes at the concept of normalcy and touches us on both personal and societal levels. From an academic perspective, the field of disability studies broadens our race, class, and gender discussions to include layers of identity and moments of connection. The Disability Studies Reader challenges us to reexamine human difference."
--I. King Jordan, President, Gallaudet University

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0415953340
• ISBN 13: 9780415953344
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 472
• Editor: Davis Lennard