The Disability Studies Reader is the most comprehensive introduction to in disability studies. Now in its third edition, it contains a wide range of seminal, cutting-edge and classic articles in the field. The collection covers cultural studies, identity politics, literary criticism, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, the visual arts, gender and race studies, as well as memoir, poetry, fiction, and prose non-fiction.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Historical Perspectives 1. Lennard Davis, "Constructing Normalcy" 2. Colin Barnes, "A Brief History of Discrimination and Disabled People" 3. Douglas Baynton, "'A Silent Exile on This Earth': The Metaphorical Construction of Deafness in the Nineteenth Century" 4. James C. Wilson, "Disability and the Human Genome" 5. Edward Wheatley, "Medieval Constructions of Blindness in France and England" Part 2: The Politics of Disability 6. Harlan Lane , "Construction of Deafness" 7. Mark Sherry, "(Post)colonising Disability" 8. Ruth Hubbard, "Abortion and Disability: Who Should and Should Not Inhabit the World?" 9. Marsha Saxton, "Disability Rights and Selective Abortion" 10. Michael Davidson, "Universal Design: The work of Disability in an Age of Globalization" 11. James Charlton, "The Dimensions of Disability Oppression" 12. Bradley Lewis, "A Mad Fight: Psychiatry and Disability Activism" Part 3: Stigma and Illness 13. Lerita M. Coleman Brown, "Stigma: An Enigma Demystified" 14. Susan Sontag, "AIDS and Its Metaphors" 15. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Beholding" 16. Brenda Brueggemann, "On (Almost) Passing" Part 4: Theorizing Disability 17. Simi Linton, "Reassigning Meaning" 18. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, "Enabling Kinship" 19. Ato Quayson, "Aesthetic Nervousness" 20. Tom Shakespeare, "The Social Model of Disability" 21. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, "Narrative Prosthesis" 22. Catherine Prendergast, "The Unexceptional Schizophrenic: A Post-Postmodern Introduction" Part 5: Identities and Intersectionalities 23. Lennard Davis, "The End of Identity Politics: On Disability as an Unstable Category" 24. Tobin Siebers, "Disability and the Theory of Complex Embodiment--For Identity Politics in a New Register" 25. Susan Wendell, "Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability" 26. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory" 27. Chris Bell, "Is Disability Studies Actually White Disability Studies?" 28. Robert McRuer, "Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence" 29. Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, "Deaf People: A Different Center" 30. R. A. R. Edwards, "Hearing Aids Are Not Deaf": A Historical Perspective on Technology in the Deaf World" 31. Eunjung Kim, "Minority Politics in Korea: Disability, Interaciality, and Gender" 32. Daniel Docherty, Richard Hughes, Patricia Phillips, David Corbett, Brendan Regan, Andrew Barber, Michael Adams, Kathy Boxall, Ian Kaplan, Shayma Izzidien, "This Is What We Think" Part 6: Disability and Culture 33. Cynthia Barounis, "Cripping Heterosexuality, Queering Able-Bodiedness: Murderball, Brokeback Mountain and the Contested Masculine Body" 34. , "The Vulnerable Articulate: James Gillingham, Aimee Mullins, and Matthew Barney" 35. Ann Millett-Gallant, "Sculpting Body Ideals: Alison Lapper Pregnant and the Public Display of Disability" 36. Anna Mollow, When Black Women Start Going on Prozac...' The Poltics of Race, Gender, and Emotional Distress in Meri Nana-Ama Danquah's Willow Weep for Me" 37. David Hevey, "The Enfreakment of Photography" 38. , "Blindness and Visual Culture: An Eyewitness Account" 39. G. Thomas Couser, "Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation" 40. Joseph N. Straus, "Autism as Culture" Part 7: Fiction, Memoir, and Poetry 41. Eli Clare, "Stones in my Pockets, Stones in my Heart" 42. Harriet McBryde Johnson, "Unspeakable Conversations" 43. Anne Finger, "Helen and Friday" 44. Cheryl Marie Wade, "'I Am Not One of the' and 'Cripple Lullaby'" 45. Kenny Fries, "Beauty and Variations" 46. Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus, "Selections from Cripple Poetics" 47. Emanuelle Laborit, "Selections from The Cry of the Gull" 48. Steve Kuusisto, "Selections from Planet of the Blind"

Author Biography

Lennard J. Davis is Professor of Disability and Human Development, English, and Medical Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of, among other works, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body; Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions; My Sense of Silence: Memoirs of a Childhood with Deafness; and Obsession: A History.