CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of DSQ:
Changing Images of Disability:
Looking Anew at Disability Images in the Mainstream
Disability images are changing, and new approaches are needed to tease out the
complexities of meanings, receptions and productions of contemporary
representations. I am guest-editing a special issue of DSQ which will focus on
recent (within the later 90s) representations of disability in the mainstream:
in film, TV, advertising, fashion, magazines, Internet. If you would like to
write about what is out there, please contact me with your ideas!
The issue will appear in Spring 2000, proposals are accepted at any time,
final deadline for finished papers is September 1999.
The issue hopes to extend as well as challenge analyses of disability imagery
which have been useful and important aspects of disability studies in the
eighties and early nineties. Scholars in the field of cultural studies have
broadened their understanding of 'identity politics', and point to the wide
variety of identities available, and the problems that any analysis of 'us'
versus 'them' runs into. How can we reshape a political project if we lack
clarity? Can we still speak of 'disability in the mainstream', if
impairments/disability and their articulation with other identities is so
varied and fragmented?
Is it politically helpful and desirable to rethink analyses of cultural texts
which portray disability, and to look for subversions and transgressions
instead of wholeheartedly condemning 'politically incorrect' representations?
Issues addressed in the collection could include (but please do not let your
imagination be restricted by my own):
- Body Horror? Cinema and the disabled body
- Making Meaning: how 'bad' is it to use disability messages, how easy are
their meanings subverted (for example, Jeffrey Deaver's The Bone Collector and
its proposed film - see recent discussions on DS-HUM)?
- Searching for the Freak: disability shock and advertising (clothes and car
ads, medical advertising)
- New or Old Aesthetics? Alexander McQueen's new ideas about fashion models
and beautiful bodies.
- Disabled Actors Claiming the Mainstream
- Rolemodels? Prominent Disabled Figures
- Conditions and Cultural Escalators: Cancer, ME (CFS), Mental Health and
changing values (there has been a lot of traffic about Oliver Sacks - would
someone like to write it up?)
- The Social Model of Disability and the Media
- Disability Images on the Net
- Disability and Community Projects: Does Very Special Art still exist?
- Disability and Authenticity: the articulation of disability and war
I hope that the special issue will be cross-disciplinary, but with a focus on
textual analysis and related methodologies. Please distribute this call to
anybody who might be interested.
Petra Kuppers
Research Fellow in Performing Arts
Manchester Metropolitan University
Freya
Cwmysg
Trecastle
Brecon LD3 8YF
United Kingdom
[log in to unmask]
I am going to be in San Francisco around the MLA, so anybody going there could
discuss material with me in person, as well.
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