Disability in German Literature, Film and Theatre
The editors of the fourth volume of the Edinburgh German Yearbook (2010)
would like to invite contributions on the subject of ‘Disability in German
Literature, Film and Theatre’.
Like Gender Studies, Postcolonialism and Queer Theory, Disability Studies is
part of the broader discussion of difference and “otherness,” and is largely
situated within debates about the politics of identity, social processes,
human rights, ethics and discrimination. As a critical resistance strategy,
Disability Studies has sought to retrieve the silenced voices of disabled
figures from their cultural locations in literature, film and theatre, and
discuss their position in relation to the counterpoint of normalcy. During
the last decade, Disability Studies has explored the binary construction of
“able” and “disabled,” exclusion strategies, and the ways in which the
disabled body has been decentred, marginalized, and has suffered under the
surveillance of controlling social and medical structures and mechanisms
that practice power over the individual. Disability Studies in now entering
a phase of positive (self-) reflection and is starting to address the
ontological politics of disability. In the light of this turning point, this
volume sets aside the division between “able” and “disabled” bodies, and
moves away from the politics of the social and medical models of reaction to
disability, and from viewing the disabled subject as representative of the
postmodern condition of fragmentation. It focuses instead on cultural
(re-)presentations of disabilities that raise questions about “the humane
gaze,” and seeks to establish disability as a condition that historically
has been at the heart of the discussion of humanity, modernity, and the
issues of social and moral behaviour in literature, film and theatre in the
German Language.
Suggested points of focus include the humanizing and (de-)humanizing gazes;
the experience of the modern condition and the discourse of disability; the
construction, performance and (re-)presentations of the dis/abled body; the
ableist and disabled gazes; the effects of inclusion and exclusion
strategies; and present and future heterotopias of disability.
*Abstracts for proposed contributions should be submitted to both editors by
email in English or German (100-200 words) by 30th March 2009*:
Dr Eleoma Joshua [log in to unmask]
Dr Michael Schillmeier [log in to unmask]
Publication will be in the autumn of 2010, and the deadline for finished
contributions will be 30 January 2010. The papers must be in English or German.
EGY is an annual publication in German Studies, published by Camden House.
It intends to encourage lively and open discussions of themes pertinent to
German Studies, viewed from a wide variety of perspectives inside and
outside the conventional boundaries of the discipline.
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