Mad Studies and disability studies

We write collaboratively, as a recent graduate and long-time faculty member of a small women’s liberal arts college, about the mental health costs of adhering to a feminist narrative of achievement that insists upon independence and resiliency.  As we explore the destabilizing potential of an alternative feminist project, one that invites different temporalities in which dis/ability emerges and may be addressed, we work with disability less as an identity than as a generative methodology, a form of relation and exchange. Mapping our own college as a specific, local site for the disabling tradition of “challenging women,” we move to larger disciplinary and undisciplining questions about the stigma of mental disabilities, traversing the tensions between institutionalizing disability studies and the field’s promise of destabilizing the constrictions of normativity.Keywords: academia, dis/ability, disability studies, education, feminism, identity studies, mad pride, mad studies, mental health, mental illness, queer studies, temporality, women’s colleges

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Mad Mothering

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies ◽

10.3828/jlcds.2021.3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 39-56

Author(s):

Patty Douglas ◽

Katherine Runswick-Cole ◽

Sara Ryan ◽

Penny Fogg

Keyword(s):

Queer Theory ◽

Disability Studies ◽

Disabled Children ◽

Critical Disability Studies ◽

Post Colonial ◽

Theoretical Approaches ◽

Mad Studies

The article brings together the fields of mad studies (LeFrancois et al.), matricentric feminism (O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism) and critical disability studies (Goodley, “Dis/entangling Critical Disability Studies”). The aim is to expose and challenge “relations of ruling” (Smith 79) that both produce and discipline “mad mothers of disabled children.” The analysis begins by exploring the un/commonalities of the emerging histories of the three disciplines. The article then identifies analytical points of intersection, including critiques of neoliberalism; troubling the “norm” (including radical resistance and activism); intersectionality, post-colonial and queer theory. Finally, the article turns to points of divergence and possible tensions between these theoretical approaches as it explores the absence of disability in matricentric feminism, the contested place of mothering in critical disability studies, and the absence of mothering in mad studies.

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Disability Studies

The Year s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory ◽

10.1093/ywcct/mbaa010 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Marion Quirici

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Disability Studies ◽

Racial Difference ◽

Special Issue ◽

Fourth Section ◽

The Third ◽

The Us ◽

Mad Studies ◽

Mind And Body ◽

The Brain

Abstract This chapter reviews major recent publications focused on madness and neurodiversity. It is organized into four sections that explore the boundaries of mad studies and disability studies. The first section, ‘Is Mad Studies Disability Studies?’, provides a brief introduction to mad studies and asks whether it should be considered a branch of disability studies or a separate field. The second section, ‘Voices’, reviews a special issue of the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health edited by Jijian Voronka and Lucy Costa to overview how various mad studies scholars are contesting and expanding the boundaries of the field. Who is the ‘us’ of ‘nothing about us without us’? Whose voices are included, and is inclusion enough? The third section, ‘Literatures’, reviews the anthology Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health, edited by Elizabeth J. Donaldson, and the monograph Black Madness :: Mad Blackness by Therí Alyce Pickens, calling for deeper attention to racial difference in mad studies and suggesting that real inclusion should be transformational. The fourth section, ‘Rhetorics’, goes outside the boundaries of mad and disability studies to review Jordynn Jack’s Raveling the Brain: Toward a Transdisciplinary Neurorhetoric. The chapter calls for future scholarship that is not only transdisciplinary but also attentive to the enmeshment of mind and body, madness and disability. I argue that, while the two fields should not be collapsed, disability studies should dialogue with mad studies wherever possible, and vice versa.

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The Absence of Psychiatric C/S/X Perspectives in Academic Discourse: Consequences and Implications

Disability Studies Quarterly ◽

10.18061/dsq.v33i1.3433 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Nev Jones ◽

Robyn Brown

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Doctoral Students ◽

Disability Studies ◽

Academic Discourse ◽

Psychiatric Disability ◽

Patient Perspectives ◽

Psychiatric Disabilities ◽

Mad Studies ◽

Movement Disability ◽

Activist Scholarship

There is growing recognition that psychiatric consumer, survivor or ex-patient perspectives are not well-integrated into disability studies work and academic discourse more generally. While limited debate has focused on whether the preferred next step is an independent ‘mad studies’ discourse or a disability studies framework more inclusive of c/s/x voices, the broader consequences of this absence have been largely overlooked. The purpose of this review is to highlight three major consequences of the absence of c/s/x voices in US academics: The (1) relatively greater biomedicalization and (2) clinical professionalization of psychiatric disability compared with other forms of disability, and (3) barriers and obstacles to training and advancement in academia for doctoral students and faculty with psychiatric disabilities.Keywords: consumer/survivor movement, disability studies, activist scholarship, disability in higher education

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A (Head) Case for a Mad Humanities: Sula's Shadrack and Black Madness

Disability Studies Quarterly ◽

10.18061/dsq.v38i4.6378 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 38 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Hayley C. Stefan

Keyword(s):

Critical Race Theory ◽

Disability Studies ◽

State Violence ◽

Literary Studies ◽

Trauma Studies ◽

Critical Race ◽

Race Theory ◽

Emotionally Disabled ◽

Complex Figure ◽

Mad Studies

This article calls for literary studies and the humanities to critically engage with the emerging subfield of Mad Studies. Developing alongside anti-psychiatry activism and Disability Studies, Mad Studies critiques how mentally and emotionally disabled individuals evidence the breadth of state violence and discrimination. After tracing a genealogy of Mad Studies, the article offers a model of a Mad literary studies approach by analyzing Shadrack from Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) as a complex figure which resists flattened readings of Black madness. The novel's scholarly history, while rich in Disability Studies readings, makes evident persistent societal neglect of distressed characters—especially distressed characters of color—as peripheral or symbolic. This article pulls from critical race theory, Disability Studies, and trauma studies to form an intersectional inquiry into the material and lived conditions of mad individuals of color. In so doing, the article demonstrates the significant possibilities of this developing interdisciplinary methodology.

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