The Extremity of Illness: Mary Sidney, Early Modern Women's Chronic Illness, and Disability Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Catherine Medici
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Disability Studies

scholarly journals "Unaccomodated Man": Dismodernism and Disability Justice in King Lear

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Significant Disability ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Important Site

King Lear's exploration of what it means to be human has significant Disability Studies implications that have not yet been examined. Through the course of the play, Lear gains awareness of interdependence, bodily vulnerability, and human-animal kinship, and his new worldview unsettles the shared ground of ableism and anthropocentrism. Analyzing three of Lear's significant speeches, I argue that King Lear's exploration of what it means to be human anticipates Lennard Davis's recent theoretical concept, dismodernism. Both Lear and Gloucester express concern for Poor Tom in ways that link disability to community and social justice. Through considering King Lear in relation to early modern contexts and current Disability Studies theory and activism, I argue that the play is an important site for developing a socially conscious Shakespearean Disability Studies.

scholarly journals (Dis)abling practices and theories?: exploring chronic illness in disability studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist ◽  
Hisayo Katsui ◽  
Janice McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Disability Studies

scholarly journals “Like Bananas with Brown Spots”

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-194
Author(s):  
Aparna Nair
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Individual Perceptions ◽  
Building Resilience ◽  
The Family ◽  
Indian Childhood ◽  
Building Community

Employing an analytical autoethnographic methodology, this paper examines how the polysemic meanings and punctuated character of epilepsy produces social and corporeal vulnerabilities in an Indian childhood. The paper further establishes the importance of the family in influencing individual perceptions and constructions of chronic illness as well as in building resilience or increasing vulnerabilities. In examining the process of research, this paper also makes an argument that disabled researchers in the field can become vulnerable in multivalent ways but also argues that the act of disclosure of epileptic/disabled identities during the research process can become central to building community and resilience. This paper also complicates the often North-centric narrative of disability studies and underlines the importance of social contexts around individual categories of disability or chronic illness.

scholarly journals Un/covering: Making Disability Identity Legible

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Dawn Evans
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Identity Negotiation ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Disability Identity ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Disability Stigma ◽  
Invisible Disabilities

This article examines one aspect of disability identity among people with non-apparent or "invisible" disabilities: the decision to emphasize, remind others about, or openly acknowledge impairment in social settings. I call this process "un/covering," and situate this concept in the sociological and Disability Studies literature on disability stigma, passing, and covering. Drawing on interviews with people who have acquired a non-apparent impairment through chronic illness or injury, I argue that decisions to un/cover (after a disability disclosure has already been made) play a pivotal role for this group in developing a strong, positive disability identity and making that identity legible to others. Decisions to pass, cover, or un/cover are ongoing decisions that stitch together the fabric of each person's daily life experiences, thus serving as primary mechanisms for identity negotiation and management.

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Critical Race Studies ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Race And Sexuality

The forty established and emerging scholars whose work is included in this volume bring an expansive understanding of feminism to questions of embodiment in Shakespeare and early modern studies. Using a diverse range of methods—historicism, psychoanalysis, queer theory, critical race studies, postcolonialism, posthumanism, eco-criticism, animal studies, disability studies, textual editing, performance and media studies—they present original readings of Shakespeare’s plays and poems while situating his work both in the early modern period and the present day. Paying particular attention to the intersections of gender with race and sexuality, the volume collectively offers an exciting snapshot of the ways that ‘feminism’ and ‘Shakespeare’ continue to speak to and challenge each another.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Encarnación Juárez-Almendros
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Social Constructionism ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Models Of Disability ◽  
Construction Of Disability

The introduction defines and describes the academic field of disabilities studies. It explains the different models of disability, --social, medical, religious, constructionist-- as well as the recent scholarship in disability studies. It also explains the major concepts drawn from other disciplines to illuminate the construction of disability, such as Erving Goffman’s stigma theory, Mary Douglas’s notion of the other as “dirt,” and Michael Foucault’s social constructionism. Diverse theories of the body as well as phenomenological perspectives complement these constructionist positions. Furthermore, the introduction delineates theoretical disability studies in the humanities and particularly discusses applications of disability methodologies in the analysis of early modern literary productions. Finally, it expounds the feminist approach to disability theory used in the book.

Staging Failure

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-153
Author(s):  
Andrew Bozio
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
Cognitive Ecology ◽  
Cognitive Failure ◽  
Early Modern Theater ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Ecological Thinking

Midway through The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Rafe mistakes the Bell Inn for an ancient castle. This chapter draws upon that episode to show how failures of ecological thinking can disrupt the assumptions that are embedded within a particular place. Contrasting Rafe’s misreading of the Bell with similar episodes in Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the chapter establishes both the particular cognitive ecology that sustains Rafe’s error and its implications for early modern theater. It argues that Rafe’s disorientation satirizes the way that early modern playgoers reimagined the stage as a dramatic setting, helping to illuminate the multiple mistakes that George and Nell make as they interrupt the performance of The London Merchant. Borrowing insights from queer theory and disability studies, the chapter concludes by suggesting that George and Nell’s disorientation reveals the normative conventions that are embedded within the physical and social environment of the early modern playhouse. In this way, madness, confusion, and other forms of cognitive failure allow The Knight of the Burning Pestle to stage the incommensurability of the two dominant ways of thinking through the Blackfriars.

Before Normal, There Was Natural: John Bulwer, Disability, and Natural Signing in Early Modern England and Beyond

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth B. Bearden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Deaf People ◽  
Human Variation ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Universal Language

Disability studies scholars and Renaissance scholars have much to learn from early modern schemata of disability. Early modern people used nature and the natural to discriminate against and to include people with atypical bodies and minds. In his writings, the English physician John Bulwer (1606–56) considers Deafness a natural human variation with definite advantages, anticipating current concepts of biolinguistic diversity and Deaf-gain, while acknowledging his society's biases. He refutes the exclusion of sign language and other forms of what he calls “ocular audition” from natural law, which made capacity for speech the benchmark for natural rights. Instead of using Deaf people as exceptions that prove the rule of nature or as limit cases for humanity, Bulwer makes deafness part of a plastic understanding of the senses, and he promotes the sociability of signed languages as a conduit to a universal language that might be encouraged and taught in England.

Masquerading Early Modern Disability

Screen Bodies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-108
Author(s):  
Lauren Coker
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Sexually Violent ◽  
Intimate Exchange

Building on Katherine Schaap Williams’s (2009) reading of the play, this article uses a disability studies approach to consider Richard Loncraine’s 1995 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Loncraine’s adaptation allows modern-day viewers to experience a highly visual (and often intimate) exchange with Sir Ian McKellen as Richard Gloucester. Specifically, Gloucester’s verbal claims of a disability that renders him unsuitable as a leader and a lack of sexual prowess are juxtaposed alongside sexually violent visual actions and imagery—particularly in the form of phallic symbols. The juxtaposition of verbal passivity in opposition to visual aggression demonstrates how Richard showcases or hides his disability as he pursues the throne: the first half of the film features Richard masquerading ability, while the second half features him masquerading disability.

Pain Made Holy

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Joanne Woiak
Keyword(s):  
Chronic Illness ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Physical Suffering ◽  
Multiple Meanings

Through an examination of the experiences of Castillar Lupe dy Cazaril, protagonist of Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion, this chapter argues that the novel mirrors academic and advocacy agendas on the topics of passing, sexuality, and care, while ultimately relating to emerging perspectives from queer disability studies critiques of normalcy. The chapter engages with The Curse of Chalion as a text that illustrates and contributes to theoretical and activist work on disability in relation to vulnerability and cure, through the multiple meanings of Cazaril’s ‘holy pain’. The chapter shows how, in its overarching concern with embodiment through Cazaril’s physical suffering, fatigue, chronic illness, and rehabilitation, Bujold’s speculative narrative aligns with recent disability studies and disability justice frameworks that hold space for multiple, nuanced perspectives on these issues, inviting examination of the connections between the bodily and social dimensions of disability.

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