CALL FOR PAPERS: Anthology on DISABILITY AND MASCULINITIES
>(Our apologies for cross-postings. Please circulate widely. Thanks.)
>
>We are seeking submissions for an edited volume on Disability and
>Masculinities.
>While there has been a wide range of writing and research on gender that
>takes account of disabled women’s perspectives, there is relatively
>little work on disabled masculinities. An analysis of how the experience
>of disability is affected by the negotiation of masculinity and vice
>versa would provide an important missing link in disability studies. This
>gap in disability studies scholarship was starkly apparent with the
>recent publication of the groundbreaking volume Gendering Disability, in
>which only a few chapters dealt explicitly with the intersection of
>disability and masculinities.
>
>This imbalance should be redressed for several reasons. First, we need to
>document the lived experiences of disabled men in order to show the
>common and diverse everyday prejudices and barriers by which they are
>disabled and the various forms of response and resistance to these
>disabling factors. Also, it is vital to consider how disabled
>masculinities are constructed in particular contexts, including
>work/career environments, school settings, the academic world, intimate
>and romantic/sexual situations. Especially relevant are interpersonal
>relations, sexuality and the negotiation of sexually intimate
>relationships: how do the above barriers and prejudices and those
>exclusions specifically constructed around various forms of intimacy and
>sexual identity play out in these important arenas?
>
>Second, we seek to apprehend the ways in which modes of cultural
>representation such as literature, film and other communications media
>represent disabled men. How are disabled men characterized in these
>various media? How does the construction of their characterizations play
>out against hegemonic forms of masculinity? Do they play foil to the
>representation of typical masculinity? And what are the existential,
>psychological, social and cultural consequences of these
>characterizations of disabled masculinity? How can negative
>representations of disabled masculinity be resisted, challenged and
>eventually transformed?
>
>Third, we need to understand how disabled masculinities articulate with
>the hierarchies of genders (especially the subordination of women) and
>other masculinities (especially hegemonic forms that tend to oppress).
>Knowing the ways in which disabled masculinities can both comply with
>hegemonic forms of masculinity in their oppression of other genders and
>social groups and how they can also sometimes diverge from hegemonic
>masculinities may be useful in the ongoing struggle to transform gender
>relations. Disability studies should especially be interested in the
>question, what kinds of alternative masculinities do disabled men
>construct? Are these masculinities pragmatic in the face of multiple
>barriers in everyday life? Do they resist, challenge, invert or subvert
>the current hegemonic gender binary?
>
>In this volume we also welcome comparative perspectives on the
>construction of masculinities, including cross-cultural and
>cross-impairment approaches. Different impairments both in contemporary
>Western societies and across non-Western societies and cultures call into
>play divergent beliefs and values that often impact differently on men
>and women. Examination of the cultural understanding and response to a
>particular impairment will be enriched by analysis of how different
>gender beliefs, expectations and practices in a society articulate with
>the values that underlie the construction of disability. As documented
>particularly in Western cultures, women are often disproportionately
>excluded from particular cultural domains because of the interplay of the
>beliefs regarding their particular impairments with feminine
>expectations. But this is not always the case (see for example Ablon’s
>research on the differential access to intimate relationships for men and
>women with neurofibromatosis, 1996, 1999). Any interrogation of disabled
>masculinities in terms of differential access needs to ask: How are
>disabled men differentially included or excluded in particular cultural
>domains vis-à-vis disabled women, given the divisive terms that organize
>gender? If included, do the cultural terms of their inclusion exclude
>disabled women? We also need analyses of multiple identity intersections
>and oppressions in the lives of disabled men. For example, how does the
>construction of masculinity differ for disabled black men from that of
>disabled white men? For disabled gay men from that of disabled straight
>men? Etc. How does a hierarchization of disabled masculinities play out
>in particular cases?
>
>Finally, we strongly urge methodological and theoretical diversity in the
>scholarship and research on disability and masculinities. We believe that
>a diversity of methodological and conceptual approaches can illuminate
>the multiple ways that disabled masculinities are lived, constructed,
>performed, represented, characterized, enacted and practiced. We seek
>scholars and researchers utilizing methods and theories from social
>science, ethnographic and humanities perspectives or any combination
>thereof.
>
>Suggested topics and questions for papers include (list is not
>exhaustive):
>-- Complex phenomenological reflection on the lived experience of
>disabled masculinities.
>-- Ethnographic research on disabled masculinities.
>-- Analyses of representations of disabled masculinity in literature,
>film and other communications media.
>-- In what ways does language inform, perform, label, and interpret
>the intersection of disability and masculinities?
>-- The intersection of female masculinities and disability.
>-- In what ways do class, race, age and other social categories of
>experience and practice affect disabled masculinities and vice versa?
>-- The construction of disabled masculinities in the face of everyday
>prejudices.
>-- The construction of disabled masculinities in particular everyday
>contexts: in work/career environments, school settings and the academic
>world, sexual situations, etc.
>-- How are disabled masculinities constructed in the face of
>hegemonic masculinities? How are they complicit with hegemonic
>masculinities? How do they diverge? How do disabled men resist hegemonic
>forms of masculinity? What kinds of alternative masculinities are
>constructed by disabled men?
>
>Please send ideas and abstracts (no more than 500 words) to both Russell
>Shuttleworth ([log in to unmask]) and Jim Ferris ([log in to unmask]) by
>July 31.
>
>
>Russell Shuttleworth, Ph.D.
>Visiting Scholar
>Institute of Urban and Regional Development
>University of California, Berkeley CA 94720-1870
>
>
>
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