
Once disability studies became a topic of discussion in the arts and humanities some scholars, such as Lennard Davis, began to question whether or not readers had considered certain authors, such as John Keats and John Milton, disabled. Some scholars support this as an appropriate way to identify and consider disability that others might have overlooked while others view this as a form of historical revisionism.


Disability Studies and the View of Authors


Some scholars looked for disabled characters in literature and attempt to analyze whether or not their disabilities are villainized or else seen as a punishment for immorality/ wrong-doing. This specific area of study is commonly referred to as the study of the literary “moral index”.


Moral Index of Disabled Characters


Scholar Lennard Davis looks at literature as a cultural expression  of major viewpoints and a vehicle by which the writer pushes major notions about productivity, morality, and way of being. This practice as a whole is named “enforcing normalcy”.


Enforcing Normalcy in Literature


Some scholars attempt to avoid generalizing the aims of literary works in their portrayals of normalcy and disability by acknowledging the nuanced space many works inhabit in creating an amalgamation of personal opinion, consideration of the audience, cultural and historical influence, etc. This more considered approach to analyzing literature with regard to culture, history, and disability is known as the “semiotics of culture”. 


The Semiotics of Culture


Many early scholars in the study of disability studies under the umbrella of the arts and humanities are commonly referred to as “first wave” disability scholars of the arts. These scholars are usually marked by their naming of new concepts and theories and some degree of generalizations. First wave disability scholars in the arts/ humanities are also marked by a general suspicion towards the way disabilities are used and portrayed in literature. 


First Wave Disability Studies Scholars in the Arts and Humanities

Physical disabilities are portrayed in literature somewhat frequently. In fact, physical disability is the most common type of disability portrayed in literature. It is also the most commonly studied depiction of disability in literature by humanities scholars. 

Physical Disability in Literature

Deafness is often a highly contested or difficult topic in the arts and humanities as some find work featuring deaf characters often centers oralist ways of being or presents oralist pedagogies. Even if the play/ novel/ media does not present oralist concepts, non-D/deaf persons often interpret the deafness as a metaphor. Despite these contentions, Deafness is still popular and common in the Arts & Humanities and Deaf Studies frequently discuss the arts.

Deafness in the Arts and Humanities

Blindness is fairly common in the Arts and Humanities and often is used to discuss topics or themes such as empathy, intimacy, and agency/ dependence. Often blindness is used by non-blind/ seeing writers/ creators to further conceptions of normalcy or discuss independence, particularly in Anglophone literature, though this is beginning to shift. 

Blindness in the Arts and Humanities

Writers have attempted to portray cognitive difference in the novel many times, typically by way of narration. One famous example is found in The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. The first section is narrated by a character many call "an idiot" and Faulkner himself called this a failure. This highlights one of many issues with writing from the perspective of those with cognitive difference- the difficulty or else impossibility of doing so when one is not cognitively different themselves.

Cognitive Difference and Narrative

Disability has been a longstanding tradition in literature and poetic verse. There is a strong tradition of employing disabled (and especially mute) female characters who communicate their message, truth, or trauma via unusual means and often these female characters represent creativity, truth, justice, or the spirit of poetic expression. Examples include the character of Philomela from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Lavinia from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. 

Disability in Poetry

Cheyne writes that genre fiction is primarily affective, building off of the same theories employed by Berlant. By their estimation, genre fiction (science fiction, horror, fantasy, etc.) functions with the assumption that the reader will experience specific emotions or reactions as embodiments of those emotions with narrative or thematic adjustments that are negligible in the ultimate face of the emotive experience itself. Similarly, Warhol said that overly evocative contemporary media, such as soap operas, are technologies of affect. For this reason, disability might commonly be employed for the ease with which it evokes an emotional response. 

Genre Fiction and Affect with Regard to Disability

In the 1970s and 1980s, disability studies was predominantly headed by scholars and researchers employing a political and sociological focus. In the late 1980s and 1990s disability studies was popularized in the humanities and arts after being brought into the academic conversation by those in cultural studies. Around the 90s scholars therefore began looking to literature as a source of cultural commentary concerning disability and normalcy.

Claremont Graduate University

The evolution of how every topic regarding disabilities has changed over time throughout the world.

History of Disability Studies

Hall, A. (2016). Literature and disability (Ser. Literature and contemporary thought). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Literature and Disability

The evolution of how the topics within education changed over time for people with disabilities in the United States of America.

History of Education for People with Disabilities in the United States of America

This study observes the effects of navigating a university environment with psychiatric disabilities. It observes students with disabilities and their overall experiences with the faculty and staff that are at universities that they are attending. There was a small group that was being studied, with 14 students being observed in total. The major themes are:

1.	The effects of stigma on the experience of being in university
2.	Impact and effect of the symptoms for students
3.	Strategies for coping with disability in the university environment
4.	Social support roles from staff and other faculty

“It’s all in your head:” Students with Psychiatric Disability Navigating the University Environment

- History of End of Life Treatment in Disability History

History of Bioethics in Disability History

- Important  Books
- Important  Figures
- Important Ideals
- Summarization of Race/Ethics in Disability History

History of Race/Ethnicity in Disability History

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation was established in 1946 and initially focused on societal views of intellectual disabilities and ways to prevent them. JPK initiated funding for research from a multitude of hospitals and a national plan was ratified. 

History of Intellectual Disabilities, Sports, and Special Olympics


The disability civil rights movement formed as a social response in the 1970’s to the longstanding oppression, stigmatization and social exclusion of people with disabilities. It was the first time in history this marginalized community used their own voices to empower themselves by fighting for policy changes that would allow for social inclusion and a more equitable social structure. 


History of the Disability Civil Rights Movement 


- Disability people during COVID-19 pandemic 
- Risk factors of disabled people in infecting with COVID-19
- Healthcare system of Disability during pandemic
- Recommendations

COVID-19 Pandemic and people with disability

According to evidence from ancient cultures, such as that of the Greeks, attitudes concerning/towards disabled persons was not an attitude of “othering”. The exclusion of disabled persons and the view that they are a burden on society was something that developed with the advent of the Industrial age when a focus on production became paramount.

Ancient View of  Disability and Industrial Perception

In the English language, the concept of “normalcy” applying to humans or ways of being is not particularly old in the grand scheme of language development. Such a usage of “normal” did not enter the English language until about 1840.

The Concept of Normalcy

Sir Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin, was one of the first early statisticians to consider ideas like normalcy or ways of being of the so-called average person. Additionally, Galton was interested in eugenics and inheritance- he actually invented the word eugenics. It is worth mentioning that Galton also developed the idea that fingerprints might be inherited and should be used for identification- pushing the idea that a person’s body and the features inherited from birth are indelibly tied to their identity. 

Sir Francis Galton


In 1883, inventor and scientist Alexander Graham Bell gave a famous ableist speech titled Memoir upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race. In said speech, Bell posits that d/Deaf individuals commonly choose other d/Deaf individuals to be their partners, often leading to d/Deaf children. Ultimately the speech warns that this could lead to an entire race of d/Deaf people. This may be seen as a villanization of disabled persons interacting and forming relationships.


Alexander Graham Bell and Eugenics

Karl Pearson was a leading figure in the development of the eugenics movement in the anglophone world. During the Edwardian period, Pearson led the Department of Applied Statistics in England. In his work, Pearson lumped together disabled individuals, the mentally ill, criminals, and violent individuals, villainizing disabilities overtly and proposing that they be removed from society altogether.

Karl Pearson


Charles Davenport was a biologist and leading eugenicist in America. In 1911 he founded the Eugenics Record Office. Davenport theorized that the influx of immigrants in America would increase the cases of crime and would introduce more disabled and mentally ill people.


Charles Davenport

Disability studies resaerch often neglects the presence of an individual's identity which can have major influence over their subjective reality and reinforces oppressive systems. 

Critical Perspective of Disability Studies

A major critique of the current disability studies discipline relates to its essentialist and binary approach to understanding disability and the subjective disability experience. 

Disability Studies and Intersectionality


Disability Studies in the Arts and Humanities

The UNCRPD (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) defines disability as long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments that, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder full and effective participation in society. People with disabilities are not a homogenous group, and individual experiences are influenced by factors such as impairment type, gender, age, family support, and environment.

What Is Disability?

People with disabilities are all different. They have different impairments and come from various places. This affects the medical care they need and how they get it. For example, kids with disabilities need to be identified early and get extra help when they are young. This helps them grow and do things better. Older adults with disabilities often have more than one problem, which makes it hard for them to get healthcare. Women with disabilities may face discrimination based on gender and disability and so have more difficulties accessing services. 

Who Are The People Affected by Disabilities?

This is a book published in 2020 that talks about 10 lessons for people with disabilities to thrive in today's society.

The Power of Disability

The term c/s/x movement is used to encapsulate what has been known as the psychiatric, or mental-health, consumer, survivor and ex-patient movement. This movement is considered to have first emerged in about 1970 with a multi-national history with movement work happening in North America, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, South America, and Australia by the 1980s. The movement is mainly concerned with both the promotion of self-help and peer support models of mental-health care and also a reform of the psychiatric services model.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After