Julia Miele Rodas
City University of New York, English, Faculty Member
- English Literature, English, Disability Studies, Victorian Literature, Autism, Utopian Literature, and 16 moreUtopian, Dystopian, and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Victorian novel, Frankenstein, Anthony Trollope, Jane Eyre, Prose Fiction, Autism studies, Science Fiction, Cultural Studies, Victorian Studies, Blindness, Disability, Disability Theory, Critical Disability Studies, Charlotte Brontë, and Autism and Languageedit
- Julia Miele Rodas is Professor of English at CUNY’s Bronx Community College. A disability studies scholar and a Victo... moreJulia Miele Rodas is Professor of English at CUNY’s Bronx Community College. A disability studies scholar and a Victorianist, Julia is the author of Autistic Disturbances (University of Michigan Press, 2018), a book theorizing the role of autistic rhetoric and aesthetic in literature, and co-editor of The Madwoman & the Blindman (The Ohio State University Press, 2012), a collection on disability in Jane Eyre. Her writing has also appeared in Victorian Literature & Culture, Dickens Studies Annual, the Victorian Review, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly, the Explicator, and other venues. She is co-editor of a book series on Literary Disability for Palgrave Macmillan. She is currently working on a long-term project exploring the intersection of violence and disability.edit
Full text of book: Table of Contents Foreword by Lennard J. Davis ix Introduction · The Madwoman and the Blindman Julia Miele Rodas, Elizabeth J. Donaldson, and David Bolt 1 Chapter 1 · The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a... more
Full text of book:
Table of Contents
Foreword by Lennard J. Davis ix
Introduction · The Madwoman and the Blindman
Julia Miele Rodas, Elizabeth J. Donaldson, and David Bolt 1
Chapter 1 · The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a
Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and
Mental Illness
Elizabeth J. Donaldson 11
Chapter 2 · The Blindman in the Classic:
Feminisms, Ocularcentrism, and Jane Eyre
David Bolt 32
Chapter 3 · “On the Spectrum”:
Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre
Julia Miele Rodas 51
Chapter 4 · From India-Rubber Back to Flesh:
A Reevaluation of Male Embodiment in Jane Eyre
Margaret Rose Torrell 71
Chapter 5 · From Custodial Care to Caring Labor:
The Discourse of Who Cares in Jane Eyre
D. Christopher Gabbard 91
Chapter 6 · “I Began to See”:
Biblical Models of Disability in Jane Eyre
Essaka Joshua 111
Chapter 7 · Illness, Disability, and Recognition in Jane Eyre
Susannah B. Mintz 129
Chapter 8 · Visions of Rochester:
Screening Desire and Disability in Jane Eyre
Martha Stoddard Holmes 150
Table of Contents
Foreword by Lennard J. Davis ix
Introduction · The Madwoman and the Blindman
Julia Miele Rodas, Elizabeth J. Donaldson, and David Bolt 1
Chapter 1 · The Corpus of the Madwoman: Toward a
Feminist Disability Studies Theory of Embodiment and
Mental Illness
Elizabeth J. Donaldson 11
Chapter 2 · The Blindman in the Classic:
Feminisms, Ocularcentrism, and Jane Eyre
David Bolt 32
Chapter 3 · “On the Spectrum”:
Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre
Julia Miele Rodas 51
Chapter 4 · From India-Rubber Back to Flesh:
A Reevaluation of Male Embodiment in Jane Eyre
Margaret Rose Torrell 71
Chapter 5 · From Custodial Care to Caring Labor:
The Discourse of Who Cares in Jane Eyre
D. Christopher Gabbard 91
Chapter 6 · “I Began to See”:
Biblical Models of Disability in Jane Eyre
Essaka Joshua 111
Chapter 7 · Illness, Disability, and Recognition in Jane Eyre
Susannah B. Mintz 129
Chapter 8 · Visions of Rochester:
Screening Desire and Disability in Jane Eyre
Martha Stoddard Holmes 150
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While research on autism has sometimes focused on special talents or abilities, autism is typically characterized as impoverished or defective when it comes to language. Autistic Disturbances reveals the ways interpreters have failed to... more
While research on autism has sometimes focused on special talents or abilities, autism is typically characterized as impoverished or defective when it comes to language. Autistic Disturbances reveals the ways interpreters have failed to register the real creative valence of autistic language and offers a theoretical framework for understanding the distinctive aesthetics of autistic rhetoric and semiotics. Reinterpreting characteristic autistic verbal practices such as repetition in the context of a more widely respected literary canon, Julia Miele Rodas argues that autistic language is actually an essential part of mainstream literary aesthetics, visible in poetry by Walt Whitman and Gertrude Stein, in novels by Charlotte Brontë and Daniel Defoe, in life writing by Andy Warhol, and even in writing by figures from popular culture.
REVIEWS
Los Angeles Review of Books, Travis Chi Wing Lau, 2 May 2019
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-poetics-of-autism/#!
Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, Maxfield Sparrow, 13 Jan 2019
http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2019/01/autistic-disturbances-review.html
Wordgathering, Michael Northen, 2018
http://www.wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue47/reviews/rodas.html
REVIEWS
Los Angeles Review of Books, Travis Chi Wing Lau, 2 May 2019
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-poetics-of-autism/#!
Thinking Person's Guide to Autism, Maxfield Sparrow, 13 Jan 2019
http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2019/01/autistic-disturbances-review.html
Wordgathering, Michael Northen, 2018
http://www.wordgathering.com/past_issues/issue47/reviews/rodas.html
Research Interests: American Literature, English Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Victorian Studies, Autism, and 21 moreDisability Studies, Literature, Critical Disability Studies, Literary Criticism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Victorian Literature, Literary Theory, Autism and creativity, Linguistics, Modernism, Autism and Language, Frankenstein, Literary Disability Studies, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Andy Warhol, Robinson Crusoe, Autism studies, Editor made me take out most of the puns, Critical Disability Theory, and Critical Autism Studies
This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors... more
This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors include many of the preeminent disability scholars publishing today, including a foreword by Lennard J. Davis.
Available Open Access: https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/53188/BOLT_Book4CD.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&fbclid=IwAR11q2OZcru-T1IFXUJ8RZZ4RBB2J7KDuX8wdEOZfKKBE8pTGckYp2COLNU
Available Open Access: https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/53188/BOLT_Book4CD.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&fbclid=IwAR11q2OZcru-T1IFXUJ8RZZ4RBB2J7KDuX8wdEOZfKKBE8pTGckYp2COLNU
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This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors... more
This breakthrough volume of critical essays on Jane Eyre from a disability perspective provides fresh insight into Charlotte Brontë’s classic novel from a vantage point that is of growing academic and cultural importance. Contributors include many of the preeminent disability scholars publishing today, including a foreword by Lennard J. Davis.
Though an indisputable classic and a landmark text for critical voices from feminism to Marxism to postcolonialism, until now, Jane Eyre has never yet been fully explored from a disability perspective. Customarily, impairment in the novel has been read unproblematically as loss, an undesired deviance from a condition of regularity vital to stable closure of the marriage plot. In fact, the most visible aspects of disability in the novel have traditionally been understood in rather rudimentary symbolic terms—the blindness of Rochester and the “madness” of Bertha apparently standing in for other aspects of identity. The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability resists this traditional reading of disability in the novel. Informed by a variety of perspectives—cultural studies, linguistics, and gender and film studies—the essays in this collection suggest surprising new interpretations, parsing the trope of the Blindman, investigating the embodiment of mental illness, and proposing an autistic identity for Jane Eyre. As the first volume of criticism dedicated to analyzing and theorizing the role of disability in a single literary text, The Madwoman and the Blindman is a model for how disability studies can open new conversation and critical thought within the literary canon.
Though an indisputable classic and a landmark text for critical voices from feminism to Marxism to postcolonialism, until now, Jane Eyre has never yet been fully explored from a disability perspective. Customarily, impairment in the novel has been read unproblematically as loss, an undesired deviance from a condition of regularity vital to stable closure of the marriage plot. In fact, the most visible aspects of disability in the novel have traditionally been understood in rather rudimentary symbolic terms—the blindness of Rochester and the “madness” of Bertha apparently standing in for other aspects of identity. The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability resists this traditional reading of disability in the novel. Informed by a variety of perspectives—cultural studies, linguistics, and gender and film studies—the essays in this collection suggest surprising new interpretations, parsing the trope of the Blindman, investigating the embodiment of mental illness, and proposing an autistic identity for Jane Eyre. As the first volume of criticism dedicated to analyzing and theorizing the role of disability in a single literary text, The Madwoman and the Blindman is a model for how disability studies can open new conversation and critical thought within the literary canon.
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This graphic essay is about an exercise developed for the community college composition classroom, using words & pictures to make a graphic "response paper." In addition to other benefits, this exercise frees up student thinking, often... more
This graphic essay is about an exercise developed for the community college composition classroom, using words & pictures to make a graphic "response paper." In addition to other benefits, this exercise frees up student thinking, often resulting in compositions that show more insight and intellectual sophistication than conventional essays, a richer understanding that can later be tapped to add greater dimension to conventional expository writing.
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Rodas addresses rhetorical and narrative interstices of Frankenstein, exploring the ways in which the visible sutures of the novel defamiliarise intuitive language and social contact, bringing the reader into a complicit relationship with... more
Rodas addresses rhetorical and narrative interstices of Frankenstein, exploring the ways in which the visible sutures of the novel defamiliarise intuitive language and social contact, bringing the reader into a complicit relationship with autism. Rodas observes that the creature’s hovel is simultaneously a container for the disposal of rejected creation and a sanctuary that shields the emergent self and allows it the privacy to develop: the space, and the being which inhabits it, constitute a representation of Romantic autism, an extreme of solitary self-ness, the ultimate expression of solitude. While the infamous ‘monster’ evokes the idea of the feral child that has often been associated with autism, however, Rodas proposes that Shelley’s novel provokes a more intimate relationship with autism than audiences might initially realise: the narrative strategies of the text bind the reader into a seemingly paradoxical experience of muteness and verbal precocity, and a correlative hyper-consciousness of boundaries—both rhetorical and social.
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Describes approaches, assignments, and philosophy behind teaching disability studies in an urban community college composition classroom, including the idea of "stealth" disability studies.
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This article has a very simple purpose: to review a free, crowd-sourced video description platform called YouDescribe, to discuss its usefulness as an accessibility tool, and to contemplate a number of crucial factors for creating a video... more
This article has a very simple purpose: to review a free, crowd-sourced video description platform called YouDescribe, to discuss its usefulness as an accessibility tool, and to contemplate a number of crucial factors for creating a video description assignment as a service-learning project for a community college composition course. This practical review is followed by a reflection exploring the unexpected pedagogical insights that were an outgrowth of the review process.
Research Interests: Media Studies, New Media, Composition and Rhetoric, Film Studies, Community Colleges, and 12 moreDisability Studies, Accessibility, Service Learning, Web Accessibility, Social Media, Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum, Service Learning in Higher Education, Film and Media Studies, Microblogging, Media Accessibility, and City University of New York
Brief comic academic memoir piece regarding a Trollopian's sabbatical travel to England.
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In March 2013, a New York Times cover story exposing the author's childhood relationship with disability forced Rodas to confront her usual practice of nondisclosure in the disability studies classroom. This article is both memoir and... more
In March 2013, a New York Times cover story exposing the author's childhood relationship with disability forced Rodas to confront her usual practice of nondisclosure in the disability studies classroom. This article is both memoir and identity theory, a remembrance of the writer's childhood experience as guide and companion to a blind and spectacularly noticeable sibling, an exploration of the possibilities and politics of ambiguous disability identity, and a meditation on the responsibilities and pitfalls of disability identity politics and practice. Contextualized by theoretical writing about self-disclosure and pedagogy, the article traces the writer's own learning trajectory around public exposure, disability identity, and disability representation, visiting the politics of language, considering how disability insiders should respond to novice thinkers about disability, and contemplating questions of legitimacy, hierarchy, and political territory. While couched in autobiographical terms, at its heart the article explores implicit relationships of power and violence around the naming or claiming of disability identity—violating exposures, colonizing practices, grappling for ownership—and proposes a “satellite” model to figure the way many ostensibly nondisabled people discover and define themselves in relation to the apparent centrality and authenticity of disability.
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Disability identity has a complex and dynamic history. Viewing disability as a social construction has been a crucial political concept, a mode of resistance to the pejorative constructs of the social majority and received forms of... more
Disability identity has a complex and dynamic history. Viewing disability as a social construction has been a crucial political concept, a mode of resistance to the pejorative constructs of the social majority and received forms of knowledge that insist on disability exclusively as a medical condition or fact of the body. However, disability identity is also increasingly interlaced with other ongoing social, political, and academic explorations and disability scholars and activists, redressing the early limits of critical disability studies, are working within race studies and global studies frameworks to expand and complicate ideas of disability identity.
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The DSM resonates with autistic logical, linguistic, and cognitive preferences in its taxonomic practice. However, this ought not to be regarded as deficit; rather, autism’s devotion to taxonomy may be seen as interpretive, curatorial,... more
The DSM resonates with autistic logical, linguistic, and cognitive preferences in its taxonomic practice. However, this ought not to be regarded as deficit; rather, autism’s devotion to taxonomy may be seen as interpretive, curatorial, exploratory, the language of order not laying out the way it is, but serving instead to investigate content relationships.
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Grounded in Boris Karloff’s 1931 film performance and confirmed by countless other films, comics, and popular representations, the prevalent sense of Frankenstein’s “monster” is of a being mute or nearly speechless, a grunting creature,... more
Grounded in Boris Karloff’s 1931 film performance and confirmed by countless other films, comics, and popular representations, the prevalent sense of Frankenstein’s “monster” is of a being mute or nearly speechless, a grunting creature, who—if he talks at all—does so in disjointed monosyllables. Such a depiction, though, tells less than half the story: the Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is, in fact, a remarkably eloquent and incisive speaker, capable of measured, intelligent, wholly articulate argument. Why has popular culture largely denied the Creature this reasonable human voice? Drawing on Enlightenment discussions of the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron and present-day arguments about how autism “speaks,” this short essay suggests that there is an important connection between the ways the Creature is represented and contemporary concerns about the representation and articulation of autism. [This is an abridged version of a talk given at the NYPL in August 2011.]
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This is an essay about a hotly contested issue in the experience and theory of disability: The question of how to locate, talk about, and live with an ambiguous disability identity. Because many disabilities are not immediately evident,... more
This is an essay about a hotly contested issue in the experience and theory of disability: The question of how to locate, talk about, and live with an ambiguous disability identity. Because many disabilities are not immediately evident, because many are progressive or create erratic episodes of impairment, and because cultural and political considerations factor largely into competing definitions of disability historically and globally, scholars and activists have been keenly attentive to how individuals locate themselves in relation to disability. While I identify with disability identity in broader terms, however, I do not want to reduce myself to a label for the social convenience of my peers. And, while my desire for medical definition offers the possibility of affirmation, it also facilitates a greater threat. For the labeling of disability effectively generates exclusion and misunderstanding, leading to the dismissal of the person as an individual; bias abounds. There are strong competing concerns in this liminal space: unless we self-identify, we participate in the rampant oppression of and discrimination against disability, but I feel stronger and better acting out my resistance from the margin of what Tobin Siebers has called the disability “masquerade” than I do by potentially acting collectively with friends and colleagues who self-identify. My desire to remain in the indefinite, occupying the “diagnosable” space, is not so much an unwillingness to stand up politically as it is a desire to challenge the disciplinary and diagnostic boundaries of the conventional order. For my own sake, certainly, for the sake of my children, but also for the sake of my colleagues, my neighbors, and my fellow parents, I embrace this undisciplined space, rejecting the confinement of diagnosis and thus choosing to challenge the narrowing definition of human “normalcy.”
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Inept, inspired, pathetic, entombed, insatiable, or monstrous: the conventions that are ordinarily used to represent blind people reveal far more about our culture than they do about the experience of blindness. This speculative essay... more
Inept, inspired, pathetic, entombed, insatiable, or monstrous: the conventions that are ordinarily used to represent blind people reveal far more about our culture than they do about the experience of blindness. This speculative essay examines the place of the blind figure in sighted culture, focusing especially on the role of language in shaping popular conceptions of and associations with blindness. Considering such common sayings as ‘blind rage,’ ‘blind alley,’ ‘blind justice,’ and ‘the blind leading the blind,’ the essay contemplates our myriad perceptions and constructions of blindness and blind people.
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“‘On the Spectrum’: Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre” engages the early writing of autism pioneers Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger and considers Jane’s unusual affect and sociality within the context of medical, theoretical, and... more
“‘On the Spectrum’: Rereading Contact and Affect in Jane Eyre” engages the early writing of autism pioneers Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger and considers Jane’s unusual affect and sociality within the context of medical, theoretical, and autobiographical writing on autism, ultimately suggesting that Jane occupies a place on the autistic spectrum. Rodas argues that readers tend to contextualize Jane’s emotional experience, the interiority of her passionate emotional life, her reduced affect, and the concealing of her deeply rooted feelings in terms of cultural history, understanding her extreme self-control and apparent poise as fitting with historically appropriate social conventions. This article points out, however, that because readers experience this self-control from the inside, Jane’s passions are highly visible and her most obvious autistic characteristics, her silence, flattened affect, and remoteness have rarely been noticed or questioned beyond a feminist context. This essay claims that Jane’s aloofness and social idiosyncrasy do not represent a tacit acceptance—as some have argued—of the exploitation and oppression of subject peoples, but point rather to the political significance of solitude. Thus, Jane achieves new political stature, becoming a model for effective resistance to social control, her “private fecundity seeding possibilities for oppressed and marginalized peoples, especially autistic persons,” who reject the punishing demands of “compulsory sociality.”
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The student art presented here (including detailed verbal descriptions) grows out of a disability awareness poster contest held at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York in the spring semester of 2008. Including a... more
The student art presented here (including detailed verbal descriptions) grows out of a disability awareness poster contest held at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York in the spring semester of 2008. Including a reproduction of a poster by student Carmen Caraballo, this brief article provides a description of the project and discusses the ways in which it offered enrichment at many levels. Specifically, by involving students, faculty, and administration in its process, the contest successfully supported an expansive awareness mission in a community which does not outwardly embrace visible disability.
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In the spring of 1826, shortly after the publication of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett’s first major poem, An Essay on Mind, a scholarly neighbor, Hugh Stuart Boyd, wrote to the young poet to express his admiration and, since they were near... more
In the spring of 1826, shortly after the publication of Elizabeth Barrett Barrett’s first major poem, An Essay on Mind, a scholarly neighbor, Hugh Stuart Boyd, wrote to the young poet to express his admiration and, since they were near neighbors, to suggest the possibility of a visit. A gentleman of independent means, Boyd was a poet-scholar with a prodigious memory but, considered from our present distance, there is little about him that seems extraordinary. It took almost a year to effect the meeting proposed by Boyd in his first letter, but when he and Barrett finally began visiting, the acquaintance seems to have ripened rapidly into friendship. Thus was to begin one of the most important, and one of the most troubling, relationships of Barrett Browning’s life. The forty-five-year-old Boyd and the twenty-year-old Barrett shared an immense love of Classical poetry and the two met frequently to read together, and to discuss literature, politics, and philosophy. Though these meetings seem to have been a real pleasure for the otherwise intellectually-starved Boyd, he was nevertheless careful to maintain proprieties, warning against any intimacy in the relationship. Barrett, however, was frustrated by Boyd’s business-like attitude and longed for something more than a purely intellectual friendship. It seems, in fact, that Barrett came to fall in love with the older, married Boyd.
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AMIDST THE CAST OF Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers (1857) is the stunningly beautiful “Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni,” who turns the heads of readers and characters alike. “It was impossible,” the narrator informs us, “that either... more
AMIDST THE CAST OF Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers (1857) is the stunningly beautiful “Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni,” who turns the heads of readers and characters alike. “It was impossible,” the narrator informs us, “that either man or woman should do other than look at her” (ch. 10). Dark and mysterious, brilliant and alluring, Madeline Neroni entices the swains of Barchester to pay her court, then toys with them mercilessly and enjoys watching them writhe. The fact that she is both beautiful and without compunction may do little to set her apart from other Victorian villainesses, Trollope's Lizzie Eustace, for instance, Wilde's Mrs. Cheveley or, more infamously, Thackeray's Becky Sharpe, but while Lizzie, Mrs. Cheveley, and Becky ultimately meet with poetic justice, their fortunes descending as their ruthless self-interest becomes increasingly apparent, Madeline keeps herself carefully protected. Pristinely beautiful from first to last, La Signora Neroni guards her virtue and maintains an even temper, bemused both by those who hate her and by those who court her, ultimately returning with her family to their home in Italy, apparently unchanged by her experience in Barchester society. Madeline has a strange kind of integrity; she is a powerful figure, a force to be reckoned with, able to stand up with equal ease and self-assurance to the daunting Mrs. Proudie, the earnest Arabin, and the slick Mr. Slope.
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While Dickens is often criticized for his sentimental and apparently objectifying representations of people (or characters) with disabilities, seeming to render disabled figures as helpless and pathetic victims, as villains, or as objects... more
While Dickens is often criticized for his sentimental and apparently objectifying representations of people (or characters) with disabilities, seeming to render disabled figures as helpless and pathetic victims, as villains, or as objects of fun, his relationship with disabled identity and his representations of disabled bodies (and minds) appear to be more complex than some would believe. This essay, part of a larger work on representations of disability in Victorian literature and culture, looks closely at four figures–Laura Bridgman in American Notes, Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol, Blind Bertha in Cricket on the Hearth, and Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield–in an effort to understand Dickens's ambivalence about disability. Specifically, the essay proposes a new theory–a study of the "satellite" –which helps us to read the relationships of power and identity that surround the presence of disability. The essay employs this theory to argue that the disabled body becomes a locus around which Dickens forms and centers his identity, his sense of himself as a writer and narrator. [Many apologies for the poor quality of this PDF. I decided that some digital access is better than no access at all. For those for whom this document is unreadable, please contact me and I can share an unofficial version in MS-Word format.]
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Observes that Rochester may be seen as a physical and psychic reflection of the stigmatized Bertha, suggesting the migration of disability identity within Bronte's text.
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Points to writer/reporter Frank Lawley as a possible model for the young Lord Silverbridge (Trollope, The Duke's Children).
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Whether they are on the autism spectrum or not, everyone interested in autism—activists, clinicians, parents, scholars, people—ought to read Stuart Murray’s excellent primer on the subject. Despite its lean profile, Autism provides a... more
Whether they are on the autism spectrum or not, everyone interested in autism—activists, clinicians, parents, scholars, people—ought to read Stuart Murray’s excellent primer on the subject. Despite its lean profile, Autism provides a surprisingly comprehensive overview of its subject, addressing definitions, contemporary biomedical and philosophical thinking, social history, literary and cultural representations, the standing of various therapies and treatments, and the politics of charitable groups and self-advocacy. The book is divided into three main parts: the first is dedicated to “The Facts”— legal and medical definitions, diagnostic approaches, and emerging clinical knowledge; the second speaks to history, culture, and politics; and the third reviews the intense controversies surrounding the ideas of “cause” and “cure” that are a pervasive aspect of autism discourse. Such a broadly integrated approach makes this book both unique and unusually useful.
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Intimate conversation about Rodas’ Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe (U Michigan P, 2018), focusing particularly on American texts. The evening opened with an overview of the book’s genesis... more
Intimate conversation about Rodas’ Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe (U Michigan P, 2018), focusing particularly on American texts. The evening opened with an overview of the book’s genesis and framework, offered a brief reading of the autistic “superficialities” visible in some familiar American texts, and culminated with open conversation about the rhetorical and aesthetic value of autistic practices like repetition and listmaking. [hosted by the New York Metro chapter of the American Studies Association (NYMASA) and CUNY’s Hunter College--thank you!]
Research Interests: Critical Theory, American Literature, American Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Autism, and 15 moreDisability Studies, Literature, Critical Disability Studies, Literary Criticism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Poetics, Literary Theory, Autism and creativity, Linguistics, Autism and Language, Visual Arts, Literary Disability Studies, Andy Warhol, Critical Disability Theory, and Critical Autism Studies
This talk focuses on Frankenstein from a disability studies perspective, looking critically at the way Frankenstein’s Creature has been interpreted in popular culture—as a “monster,” an outcast, and as an oppressed minority. In addition... more
This talk focuses on Frankenstein from a disability studies perspective, looking critically at the way Frankenstein’s Creature has been interpreted in popular culture—as a “monster,” an outcast, and as an oppressed minority. In addition to discussing the importance of the creature, the talk focuses on specific uses of language and storytelling structure in Mary Shelley’s book, pointing out how some of these features echo autistic ways of speaking. In the end, it shows that it is not only the Creature who can be understood from a disability perspective, but that the novel itself speaks with a “disabled” voice. (part of the international Frankenreads celebration co-sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Keats-Shelley Association of America)
Research Interests: Disability Studies, The Novel, Critical Disability Studies, Popular Culture, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and 11 moreTheory of the Novel, Disability Theory, English Novel, Autism and creativity, Linguistics, Novel, Autism and Language, Frankenstein, Monsters and Monster Theory, Monsters and the Monstrous, and Frankenstein Mary Shelley
October 1, 2018 ≡ 5:00-6:15pm ≡ Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus A highlight From Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics. The language of lists and catalogues is a distinctively autistic form of rhetoric and... more
October 1, 2018 ≡ 5:00-6:15pm ≡ Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus
A highlight From Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics.
The language of lists and catalogues is a distinctively autistic form of rhetoric and autism-world is populated by inveterate listmakers, coders, framers, categorizers, collectors, and organizers. While this system aesthetic is prized in many circles, however, such patterning is frequently devalued in the larger culture. List writing is dismissed as banal, vacant, meaningless, or obsessive; indeed, there is a robust cultural association between system aesthetics and totalitarian thinking. This talk will push back against the judgment of literary, cultural, and medical authorities to explore the poetics of list-making from an autism-positive perspective, as a technique imbued with surprising complexity, creativity, and flexibility. Presented at the invitation of Fordham University’s Seminar on Disability Research across Disciplines, a seminar series organized by the Faculty Working Group on Disability and funded by the Provost’s Office.
A highlight From Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics.
The language of lists and catalogues is a distinctively autistic form of rhetoric and autism-world is populated by inveterate listmakers, coders, framers, categorizers, collectors, and organizers. While this system aesthetic is prized in many circles, however, such patterning is frequently devalued in the larger culture. List writing is dismissed as banal, vacant, meaningless, or obsessive; indeed, there is a robust cultural association between system aesthetics and totalitarian thinking. This talk will push back against the judgment of literary, cultural, and medical authorities to explore the poetics of list-making from an autism-positive perspective, as a technique imbued with surprising complexity, creativity, and flexibility. Presented at the invitation of Fordham University’s Seminar on Disability Research across Disciplines, a seminar series organized by the Faculty Working Group on Disability and funded by the Provost’s Office.
Research Interests: Systematics (Taxonomy), Aesthetics, Rhetoric, Autism, Disability Studies, and 12 moreLiterature, Critical Disability Studies, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Visual Rhetoric, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Literary Theory, Aesthetics and Ethics, Autism and Language, Georges Perec, Autism studies, and Critical Autism Studies
book launch & signing for Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe September 5, 2018 ≡ 6:30-7:30pm ≡ CUNY School for Professional Studies Arguing that autistic expression has been an important... more
book launch & signing for Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe
September 5, 2018 ≡ 6:30-7:30pm ≡ CUNY School for Professional Studies
Arguing that autistic expression has been an important contributing factor in many texts, this talk offers an overview of the central themes of Autistic Disturbances, exploring how autistic verbal expression has frequently been miscast as waste and looking at the fundamental aesthetic and creative value of autistic language. Taking an autism positive approach, Dr. Rodas looks at the ways autistic rhetorics thread through and enhance the richness and vibrancy of shared human language.
co-sponsored by the CUNY Disability Scholars; the Columbia University Seminar in Disability, Culture & Society; the Futures Initiative & the CUNY Graduate Center Program in Music–thanks!
September 5, 2018 ≡ 6:30-7:30pm ≡ CUNY School for Professional Studies
Arguing that autistic expression has been an important contributing factor in many texts, this talk offers an overview of the central themes of Autistic Disturbances, exploring how autistic verbal expression has frequently been miscast as waste and looking at the fundamental aesthetic and creative value of autistic language. Taking an autism positive approach, Dr. Rodas looks at the ways autistic rhetorics thread through and enhance the richness and vibrancy of shared human language.
co-sponsored by the CUNY Disability Scholars; the Columbia University Seminar in Disability, Culture & Society; the Futures Initiative & the CUNY Graduate Center Program in Music–thanks!
Research Interests: Semiotics, Rhetoric, Autism, Disability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, and 11 moreLiterary Criticism, Cultural Semiotics, Visual Rhetoric, Cultural Theory, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Literary Theory, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Autism and Language, Andy Warhol, Robinson Crusoe, and Critical Disability Theory
This presentation reviews a free, crowd-sourced video description platform called YouDescribe, discusses its usefulness as an accessibility tool, and proposes video description as a valuable form of service learning. This PowerPoint is... more
This presentation reviews a free, crowd-sourced video description platform called YouDescribe, discusses its usefulness as an accessibility tool, and proposes video description as a valuable form of service learning. This PowerPoint is designed as a visual supplement to the talk; for accessible text, see http://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/youdescribe-testing-crowd-sourced-video-description-for-service-learning-at-the-city-university-of-new-york/
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Outlines expressions of autism poetics in Frankenstein, David Copperfield, and "Bartleby, the Scrivener. This is a PowerPoint presentation prepared to provide a visual for sighted people at the talk. For more information about the book... more
Outlines expressions of autism poetics in Frankenstein, David Copperfield, and "Bartleby, the Scrivener. This is a PowerPoint presentation prepared to provide a visual for sighted people at the talk. For more information about the book project, see https://bcc-cuny.digication.com/julia.rodas/A_Manner_of_Speaking1/published
For a copy of the talk, contact me directly.
For a copy of the talk, contact me directly.
Research Interests: American Literature, English Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Autism, Disability Studies, and 10 moreLiterature, Critical Disability Studies, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Autism and Language, Literary Disability Studies, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Aspergers and High Functioning Autism, and Literary and Cultural Disability Studies
This talk explores the typically unrecognized autistic rhetoric of Brontë’s Villette. Specifically, the paper delves into the widely recognized narrative and rhetorical opacity of the novel—aspects of the text which have prompted scholars... more
This talk explores the typically unrecognized autistic rhetoric of Brontë’s Villette. Specifically, the paper delves into the widely recognized narrative and rhetorical opacity of the novel—aspects of the text which have prompted scholars to note the “queerness” of the narrator (Weinstone), contributed to interpretations of Lucy Snow as a “frozen woman” (Forsyth 21), speak to the novel’s “traumatic moments of narrative amnesia” (Shears and Harrison 27), and which argue that “the apparent intimacy of first person narration [is] never borne out, the trust breached by opacities in the narrative, so that we are imprisoned within Lucy without full knowledge of her” (Beer 182)—and contemplates the ways in which these rhetorical features reflect an autistic linguistic register. Part of a larger project on autism poetics, the focus here is on two salient qualities of autistic language: verbal expression that reads as “silent” and “local coherence.” The former emerges from a powerful construct of autism, fueled by medical discourse and popular culture, that suppresses authentic autistic expression, leading to a false perception of autism as absent, opaque, or silent; the latter (“local coherence”) describes a distinctive autistic inclination for the finite and particular, frequently regarded by mainstream culture as communicative failure rather than cognitive or aesthetic preference. The talk observes the way these aspects of Villette’s rhetoric play against the relentless monologic or apostrophic frame of the larger text, generating an unusual discursive pattern, redolent of autism poetics. Within the narrative of Villette, there is a tension between these three features—silence, local coherence, and persistent narrative monologism. For many readers, this tension functions as a destabilizing rhetoric and contributes to a sense of hiddenness, or, to the feeling that the narrator is pulling away. Without diminishing existing feminist and historically-grounded interpretations that read these aspects of the novel within the context of the oppression of 19th-century British women, this paper seeks to open additional avenues for exploration at the intersection of disability theory, autism studies, and critical feminist thought.
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What is the responsibility of the public university with respect to disability studies and what is the mission of disability studies in reference to the public university?
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A talk for Museum Access Consortium (MAC) advocating for recognition of autistic resonances (and other disability culture) in exhibition content. Builds on my work in literary autism studies. Associated Powerpoint available upon request.
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One of the great pleasures of autism is its perseverative reenactments of symbolic order and containment. From clinical models identifying and defining autistic "stereotypy" to the repetitive and recursive systems of temporal and spatial... more
One of the great pleasures of autism is its perseverative reenactments of symbolic order and containment. From clinical models identifying and defining autistic "stereotypy" to the repetitive and recursive systems of temporal and spatial exploration favored by many autistic people, the inclination to play with symbolic pattern is widely recognized as a hallmark of autistic cognition, identity, and aesthetic. Regarded as one of the core diagnostic features of autistic "disorder," repetitive signatures of autistic practice are typically understood in terms of deficiency: an inappropriate form of self-expression, an unhealthy or unproductive focus on the nonessential, or, a rigid and mechanistic form of interaction with the world. A growing minority of autism-friendly thinkers, however, has begun to challenge this dominant interpretive consensus, among other things, recognizing the systemizing gesture--the autistic proclivity for pattern--as productive or creative rather than mechanistic, meaningless, or psychopathological. Unfolding this observation within an explicitly literary framework, this talk draws a connection between survivalist inventories, the lists implicitly framed within formal petitionary prayer, and formally structured literary utopias, suggesting a generic relationship between these disparate forms and proposing that all three exhibit a fundamentally autistic literary aesthetic.
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I suggest that the voice exploding from this text is not only that of the individualist or the anti-hero, but that Catcher echoes with an explicitly autistic vibration, its attenuated modernist tone, its deeply idiosyncratic affect, its... more
I suggest that the voice exploding from this text is not only that of the individualist or the anti-hero, but that Catcher echoes with an explicitly autistic vibration, its attenuated modernist tone, its deeply idiosyncratic affect, its meticulous perseverative perspective, and its implicit monologism combining to resonate distinctively with autistic aesthetic and rhetoric; and, I would like to suggest, in turn, that collective dissent is often expressed in these terms, as an autistic resonance that flourishes in texts like Catcher, and which relies on human singularity to speak for social, political, and aesthetic values it turns out are widely shared in our culture.
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There is an implicit relationship between the practice of aligning objects and the practice of aligning abstract symbols—including words. This prioritizing of symbolic collection, alignment, and organization reflects autistic aesthetic... more
There is an implicit relationship between the practice of aligning objects and the practice of aligning abstract symbols—including words. This prioritizing of symbolic collection, alignment, and organization reflects autistic aesthetic and cognitive perceptual habits. In fact, listmaking, as autistic practice, informs enshrined mainstream textual products like scientific catalogue, litany, and formal poetry.
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Videogame narratives--in their hyperstructural architecture--privilege autistic voice and an autistic aesthetic.
The infamous “monster” at the center of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents a tempting target for diagnostic interpretation, evoking the idea of the feral child (or, l’enfant sauvage) that has often been associated with autism. But... more
The infamous “monster” at the center of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents a tempting target for diagnostic interpretation, evoking the idea of the feral child (or, l’enfant sauvage) that has often been associated with autism. But Shelley’s complex and disturbing novel provokes a more intimate relationship with autism than audiences might initially realize; for the narrative strategies of the text bind the reader into a seemingly paradoxical experience of “muteness and verbal precocity” and a correlative hyper-consciousness of boundaries—both rhetorical and social—that resonate profoundly with what might be understood as an autistic approach or aesthetic. This talk delves into the semiotic, rhetorical, and narrative interstices of the Frankenstein text to explore the ways in which the visible sutures of the novel defamiliarize intuitive language and social contact and bring the reader into a complicit relationship with autism.
What does Martha Stewart have to teach us about autistic voice? By bringing typically invisible social rules and customs into relief in staged social environments, Stewart’s work challenges the hegemony of transparent human social... more
What does Martha Stewart have to teach us about autistic voice?
By bringing typically invisible social rules and customs into relief in staged social environments, Stewart’s work challenges the hegemony of transparent human social intuition and uses symbolic tools to facilitate understanding of and interaction with normative human sociality. Though demonized for her apparent materialism, and for her seeming aggrandizement of the trivial, Martha Stewart is, in fact, an artist of structure and composition and her work may certainly be read as aligning with a utopian tradition that is deeply rooted in autistic values and aesthetic. In fact, the compositions constructed under the institutional authorship of Martha Stewart may serve as the paradigm for other more traditionally understood utopian texts, which (like Stewart’s creations) have both narrative and spatial dimension, which embrace fiction and the fantastic, which reflect on the implication of personhood within narrative, which bring the ordinarily invisible rules and connective threads of human social relationship into relief, and which begin to decode the role played by the individual within lived narrative. As an expert fabricator of social narrative, Stewart, this often-vilified icon of domesticity, brings people, props, and space into predetermined social configurations, creating sheltered imaginative space that abstracts and figures conventional human sociality, ultimately helping to render visible the autistic aesthetic which underlies the greater utopian project.
By bringing typically invisible social rules and customs into relief in staged social environments, Stewart’s work challenges the hegemony of transparent human social intuition and uses symbolic tools to facilitate understanding of and interaction with normative human sociality. Though demonized for her apparent materialism, and for her seeming aggrandizement of the trivial, Martha Stewart is, in fact, an artist of structure and composition and her work may certainly be read as aligning with a utopian tradition that is deeply rooted in autistic values and aesthetic. In fact, the compositions constructed under the institutional authorship of Martha Stewart may serve as the paradigm for other more traditionally understood utopian texts, which (like Stewart’s creations) have both narrative and spatial dimension, which embrace fiction and the fantastic, which reflect on the implication of personhood within narrative, which bring the ordinarily invisible rules and connective threads of human social relationship into relief, and which begin to decode the role played by the individual within lived narrative. As an expert fabricator of social narrative, Stewart, this often-vilified icon of domesticity, brings people, props, and space into predetermined social configurations, creating sheltered imaginative space that abstracts and figures conventional human sociality, ultimately helping to render visible the autistic aesthetic which underlies the greater utopian project.
Grounded in Boris Karloff’s 1931 film performance and confirmed by countless other films, comics, and popular representations, the prevalent sense of Frankenstein’s “monster” is of a being mute or nearly speechless, a grunting creature,... more
Grounded in Boris Karloff’s 1931 film performance and confirmed by countless other films, comics, and popular representations, the prevalent sense of Frankenstein’s “monster” is of a being mute or nearly speechless, a grunting creature, who—if he talks at all—does so in disjointed monosyllables. Such a depiction, though, tells less than half the story: the Creature in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is, in fact, a remarkably eloquent and incisive speaker, capable of measured, intelligent, wholly articulate argument. Why has popular culture largely denied the Creature this reasonable human voice? Drawing on Enlightenment discussions of the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron and present-day arguments about how autism “speaks,” this talk suggests that there is an important connection between the ways the Creature is represented and contemporary concerns about the representation and articulation of autism.
The last ten years have seen a massive growth of interest around the idea of disability and sexuality. While popular assumptions have typically represented people with disabilities as being non-sexual, disability scholars and activists... more
The last ten years have seen a massive growth of interest around the idea of disability and sexuality. While popular assumptions have typically represented people with disabilities as being non-sexual, disability scholars and activists have increasingly contested this notion, demonstrating that people with disabilities, like nondisabled people, participate in a full and complex range of sexual identities and desires. Despite pushing back against the stereotype of disability as nonsexual, however, little work has been done to explore a contrary phenomenon, the cultural stereotypes that hyper-sexualize blindness and blind people and that fetishize blindness in popular culture. Using examples from a variety of cultural and literary texts, the speaker aims to bring participants into an enriched awareness of the ways in which blind sexuality is represented, provoking discussion about how this stereotype reflects the fears and desires of the sighted majority.
Race-conscious/antiracist syllabus for introduction to English literature since the Romantics. Curriculum is focused on literature of England, but foregrounds the existence and role of people of color in respect to assigned texts.... more
Race-conscious/antiracist syllabus for introduction to English literature since the Romantics. Curriculum is focused on literature of England, but foregrounds the existence and role of people of color in respect to assigned texts. Designed for Bronx Community College/CUNY. White professor; majority of students are people of color. Definitely a work in progress. Not intended as a model, but as a starting point. Wanted to share my thinking and work since I know many other faculty teaching similar courses are seeking mutual aid. More detailed syllabus, assignments, reading, etc. available upon request. (I am especially indebted to Prof. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina for the scholarship that made this syllabus redesign possible.)
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Simple Disability Studies & art activity, suitable for distance learning. Instructs students how to search for disability in the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to comment on and share disability content and perspectives... more
Simple Disability Studies & art activity, suitable for distance learning. Instructs students how to search for disability in the collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and to comment on and share disability content and perspectives on social media. Please use and share. Please use #CripTheMet (note initial capitals) and tag me if possible. I apologize for any problems of accessibility.
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DRAFT syllabus for team-taught Doctoral Seminar in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies. Course description. Like the fictions of gender and race, disability is a cultural and social formation that sorts bodies and minds into desirable... more
DRAFT syllabus for team-taught Doctoral Seminar in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies. Course description. Like the fictions of gender and race, disability is a cultural and social formation that sorts bodies and minds into desirable (normal) and undesirable (abnormal, sick) categories. Regimes of representation in literature, art, music, theater, film, and popular culture—the ways that bodies and minds constructed as disabled are depicted—both reflect and shape cultural understandings of nonconforming identities and extraordinary bodies, affecting the lived experience of people understood as disabled, often in negative ways. Drawing on examples from the arts and popular culture, this course will interrogate the many ways disability identity has been confined to rigid and unproductive social, political, and aesthetic categories. It will also explore a significant counter-tradition in which disability is seen as a significant artistic resource and a desirable way of being in the world. Topics will include: the medical and social models of disability; narratives of disability; disability and performance; disability writing (memoir and fiction); narratives of overcoming; the histories and cultures of autism, deafness, blindness, intellectual disability, and madness. We will pay particular attention to the intersection of disability with other more familiar tropes of human disqualification, including race, gender, and sexuality.
Research Interests: Musicology, Deaf studies, Autism, Disability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, and 10 moreBlindness, History Of Madness And Psychiatry, Memoir and Autobiography, Women and Madness, Life Writing (Literature), Madness and Literature, Race and Disability, Media constructions of gender, race and disability, Critical Disability Theory, and Intersections of race and disability
Instructional comic for doing an informal comic writing assignment in response to chapter 2 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.Have gotten great results with this prompt, once students get a little reassurance. [A thousand apologies... more
Instructional comic for doing an informal comic writing assignment in response to chapter 2 of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics.Have gotten great results with this prompt, once students get a little reassurance. [A thousand apologies to those of you who tried to look at this without success--the initial PDF was corrupted--this one should do the trick. Happy comixing!]
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Syllabus for Intro course in Literary Disability at CUNY's Lehman College.
Research Interests: English Literature, Literature, Critical Disability Studies, Intellectual Disability, Writing Across the Curriculum, and 9 moreLiterary Disability Studies, Disability, Literary studies, Public policies and higher education, Undergraduate Education, Autism studies, Disabiliy Studies, Thinking and Writing Across the Curriculum/Language and Learning, and Critical Autism Studies
Syllabus--Composition II
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Syllabus--Composition II & Fiction
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Detailed syllabus for community college advanced composition course with the theme--unfree
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Syllabus for an advanced compositions course at Bronx Community College CUNY. Introduction to writing about literature. For more, see the course website--
https://bcc-cuny.digication.com/eng_14themes_in_prose_fiction/Welcome2
https://bcc-cuny.digication.com/eng_14themes_in_prose_fiction/Welcome2
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Page 1. their own freedom-and life-are at stake is their punishment for being solely interested in capital (ie, monetary/material) growth. By abiding by the code of honor, albeit grudgingly, Fagin demonstrates that this was a risk... more
Page 1. their own freedom-and life-are at stake is their punishment for being solely interested in capital (ie, monetary/material) growth. By abiding by the code of honor, albeit grudgingly, Fagin demonstrates that this was a risk that he was willing to take. ...
Research Interests: Art and Literary studies
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This graphic essay focuses on the use of graphic composition strategies and includes work by contributing authors from my community college composition classroom. The main point of this piece is that *everyone deserves access to important... more
This graphic essay focuses on the use of graphic composition strategies and includes work by contributing authors from my community college composition classroom. The main point of this piece is that *everyone deserves access to important ideas and information and that using comics to teach and to learn disciplines us to pare away the nonessential and prioritize foundational content. Pictures and emphatic word-art help clarify complex concepts for many who might otherwise struggle to master challenging written text. For these people, comics can provide a point of entry to discourse to which they might otherwise have had only marginal access. The exercise discussed in this graphic essay disentangles students from the pressures of performing conventional standards of (white) literacy while providing an avenue into antiracist reasoning and the discourse of public intellectuals of color.
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As a scholar deeply invested in disability studies (DS) and as an educator just as deeply committed to serving students at the City University of New York’s Bronx Community College (BCC), where I teach, I frequently reflect on the way we... more
As a scholar deeply invested in disability studies (DS) and as an educator just as deeply committed to serving students at the City University of New York’s Bronx Community College (BCC), where I teach, I frequently reflect on the way we welcome novices to the field of DS. In the twenty or so years since the publication of Lennard Davis’ ground-breaking Enforcing Normalcy (1995) and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s foundational Extraordinary Bodies (1997), DS in the humanities has moved from an emergent arena of inquiry to a burgeoning field with hundreds of active scholars and dozens of academic programs in the US alone. It has weathered criticism from those who have portrayed it as one of “so many other trendy ‘studies’” in departments “where standards are forgiving and arcane theories flourish” (Allen), or, who derided it as being chief among the “victim disciplines” (Schoenfeld), and DS is now widely recognized and respected in larger academic communities. A 2013 New York Times piece confirms the academic stature of the discipline: “Like black studies, women’s studies and other liberation-movement disciplines, DS teaches that it is an unaccepting society that needs normalizing, not the minority group” (Simon). By every measure—programs, courses offered, scholarly publication, the growth of learned journals and societies—DS is flourishing. With this growth, the scholarly sophistication of DS has also developed. Though the field has always demonstrated substantial rigor, early work necessarily covered essential ground, pointing to the presence and role of disabled characters and authors in fiction, for example, or, reclaiming disability identity for historical figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This initial work has given rise to ever more nuanced scholarship. For instance, early theorists of disability identity favored “people-first” language (e.g., a person with autism), arguing that an individual’s personhood should be respected as the foremost aspect of identity, but as thinking has developed, disability is increasingly regarded as fundamental to the composition of self, and recent scholarly writing in the field is beginning to evidence more direct language, reflecting the integral place of disability in identity (i.e., “autistic person,” or, “autist”). (Jim Sinclair’s widely disseminated “Why I Dislike ‘Person First’ Language” serves as an early expression of such resistance, but recent writing indicates a growing trend in this direction [Collier; Chacala et al.].) Likewise, early DS urged interpretations forwarding disabled agency; disability had for so long (and so destructively) been con-
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The student art presented here (including detailed verbal descriptions) grows out of a disability awareness poster contest held at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York in the spring semester of 2008. Including a... more
The student art presented here (including detailed verbal descriptions) grows out of a disability awareness poster contest held at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York in the spring semester of 2008. Including a reproduction of a poster by student Carmen ...
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... Page 9. julia miele rodas ... Rather than mourning the absent child, the mother seems to miss her own satellite role; the speaker recognizes that the mother grieves not so much for the death of her son as for the death of her own... more
... Page 9. julia miele rodas ... Rather than mourning the absent child, the mother seems to miss her own satellite role; the speaker recognizes that the mother grieves not so much for the death of her son as for the death of her own identity as guide, interpreter, teacher, and mediator. ...
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Whilst legislation may have progressed internationally and nationally for disabled people, barriers continue to exist, of which one of the most pervasive and ingrained is attitudinal. Social attitudes are often rooted in a lack of... more
Whilst legislation may have progressed internationally and nationally for disabled people, barriers continue to exist, of which one of the most pervasive and ingrained is attitudinal. Social attitudes are often rooted in a lack of knowledge and are perpetuated through erroneous stereotypes, and ultimately these legal and policy changes are ineffectual without a corresponding attitudinal change. This unique book provides a much needed, multifaceted exploration of changing social attitudes toward disability. Adopting a tripartite approach to examining disability, the book looks at historical, cultural, and education studies, broadly conceived, in order to provide a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the documentation and endorsement of changing social attitudes toward disability. Written by a selection of established and emerging scholars in the field, the book aims to break down some of the unhelpful boundaries between disciplines so that disability is recognised as an issue for all of us across all aspects of society, and to encourage readers to recognise disability in all its forms and within all its contexts. This truly multidimensional approach to changing social attitudes will be important reading for students and researchers of disability from education, cultural and disability studies, and all those interested in the questions and issues surrounding attitudes toward disability.
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It is with some trepidation that I here confess that my first thoughts linking Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) with autism had to do with the protagonist's remarkable partiality for enclosures and fortifications.... more
It is with some trepidation that I here confess that my first thoughts linking Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) with autism had to do with the protagonist's remarkable partiality for enclosures and fortifications. Resonating powerfully with Bruno Bettelheim's long-...
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Page 1. their own freedom-and life-are at stake is their punishment for being solely interested in capital (ie, monetary/material) growth. By abiding by the code of honor, albeit grudgingly, Fagin demonstrates that this was a risk... more
Page 1. their own freedom-and life-are at stake is their punishment for being solely interested in capital (ie, monetary/material) growth. By abiding by the code of honor, albeit grudgingly, Fagin demonstrates that this was a risk that he was willing to take. ...
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Literary Disability Studies is the first book series dedicated to the exploration of literature and literary topics from a disability studies perspective. Focused on literary content and informed by disability theory, disability research,... more
Literary Disability Studies is the first book series dedicated to the exploration of literature and literary topics from a disability studies perspective. Focused on literary content and informed by disability theory, disability research, disability activism, and disability experience, the Palgrave Macmillan series provides a home for a growing body of advanced scholarship exploring the ways in which the literary imagination intersects with historical and contemporary attitudes toward disability. This cutting edge interdisciplinary work includes both monographs and edited collections (as well as focused research that does not fall within traditional monograph length).