Disability Studies Resource List

“Disability is a fact of the human experience, not the exception,” as mentioned by the University of Washington Disability Studies department.

Disability Studies emerged in the late twentieth century as an interdisciplinary area of study examining the social, cultural, historical, legal, and political dimensions of disability. To bring attention to and promote works in this growing academic discipline as essential to the humanities and social sciences, we recently asked our fellows to contribute and recommend resources including scholarly articles, blog posts, videos, social media campaigns, and more on disability and Disability Studies. 

These resources are an addition to a growing series, also including resource pages, on race and racism, LGBTQ+ liberation, Hispanic/Latinx Studies, and Indigenous Studies, all part of our ongoing commitment to and efforts in inclusive excellence and amplifying scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. 

If you have a favorite resource – yours or another’s – on Disability Studies, please share your contributions, or any questions or comments, with us at [email protected].

DISABILITY IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

• Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04, Professor Emeritus of English at Loyola University Chicago
• Afterword, The Treatment of Disabled Persons in Medieval Europe: Examining Disability in the Historical, Legal, Literary, Medical, and Religious Discourses of the Middle Ages
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “Blindness: Evolving Religious and Secular Constructions and Responses” in a Cultural History of Disability: The Middle Ages
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “A River Runs through It: Disability, Homosexuality, Queered/Disabled Discourse, and the Isle of Blandie in Bérinus” in Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “The Blind Beating the Blind: An Unidentified ‘Game’ in a Marginal Illustration of the “Romance of Alexander”, MS Bodley 264” in the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “Blindness, Discipline, and Reward: Louis IX and the Foundation of the Hospice des Quinze Vingts” in the Disability Studies Quarterly
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “‘Blind’ Jews and Blind Christians: Metaphorics of Marginalization in Medieval Europe,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04

LITERATURE AND DISABILITY

• The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability
  Submitted by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “Monsters, Saints, and Sinners: Disability in Medieval Literature,” in the Cambridge Companion to Disability and Literature
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04
• “Voices of Violence: Medieval French Farce and the Dover Cliff Scene in King Lear” in Comparative Drama
  Written by Edward Wheatley F’04

CHILD DISABILITY AND SPECIAL EDUCATION IN CHINA

• “Mothering Special Children: Negotiating Gender, Disability, and Special Education in Contemporary China” in the Harvard Educational Review
  Written by Jinting Wu F’20, Assistant Professor of Educational Culture, Policy and Society at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
• “Mothering Special Needs Children in Contemporary China” in the Harvard Education Publishing Group Blog
  Written by Jinting Wu F’20
• “Disability Segregation in an Age of Inclusion: Navigating Educational Pathways through Special Education Schools in Contemporary China” in the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy Blog
  Written by Jinting Wu F’20

BLIND AND DEAF HISTORY

• “From Outcast to Citizen: Disability, Education, and Architecture in Postrevolutionary Paris” in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
  Written by Sun-Young Park F’19, Associate Professor of History at George Mason University
• “Conversion, Renovation, Restoration: The Paris Deaf Institute, 1760-1840,” in Future Anterior
  Written by Sun-Young Park F’19

SOCIETY FOR DISABILITY STUDIES

• Society for Disability Studies
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10, Associate Professor, Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

DISABILITY HISTORY ASSOCIATION

• Disability History Association’s “All of Us”
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

SMITHSONIAN NMAH EVERYBODY ONLINE EXHIBITION

• EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

JOURNAL FOR DISABILITY STUDIES

• Disability Studies Quarterly
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

CRITICAL DISABILITY STUDIES CAUCUS (CDSC)

• Critical Disability Studies Caucus (CDSC)
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

DISABILITY RIGHTS ARCHIVE

• Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Archive at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

DISABILITY VISIBILITY PROJECT

• Disability Visibility Project
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

PODCASTS ABOUT DISABILITY

• Disability Visibility Project Podcast
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10
• Contra* Podcast
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

DOCUMENTARIES ON DISABILITY

• Deej
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10
• Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10
• Crip Camp
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

DISABILITY JUSTICE PERFORMANCE PROJECT

• Sins Invalid
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

POLITICAL ORGANIZING

• #CripTheVote
  Submitted by Bess Williamson F’10

ANTHROPOLOGY AND DISABILITY

• “Disability from the South: Toward a Lexicon”
  Written by Michele Friedner and Tyler Zoanni F’18
• “Care in the Middle Voice”
  Written by Tyler Zoanni F’18
• “Disabled Lives, Personhood, and Politics in Uganda: An Interview with Tyler Zoanni” for the Society for Cultural Anthropology
  Submitted by Tyler Zoanni F’18
• “For an Anthropology of Cognitive Disability” in the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
  Written by Patrick McKearney and Tyler Zoanni F’18
• “The Possibilities of Failure: Personhood and Cognitive Disability in Urban Uganda” in the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
  Written by Tyler Zoanni F’18
• “Appearances of Disability and Christianity in Uganda” in Cultural Anthropology
  Written by Tyler Zoanni F’18
• “An Ecology of Disabled Minds in Urban Uganda” in Medical Anthropology
  Written by Tyler Zoanni F’18

CLASSROOM ACCESSIBILITY

• “Creating an Accessible Online Presentation”
  Written by Tyler Zoanni F’18

DISABILITY FRAMEWORKS AND DISABILITY JUSTICE

• “The Rhetoric of Ableism” in Disability Studies Quarterly
  Submitted by Jimmie Manning, Chair and Professor, Communication Studies, School of Social Research & Justice Studies, University of Nevada, Reno
• Care work: Dreaming Disability Justice
  Submitted by Susan Kalt F’19, Professor of Language, Roxbury Community College
• “Society for Sick Societies: Hold Your Breath” in Social Text
  Written by Pooja G. Rangan F’20, Associate Professor of English in Film and Media Studies at Amherst College
• “‘Having a Voice’: Toward an Autistic Counterdiscourse of Documentary” in Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary
  Written by Pooja G. Rangan F’20

ESSAY COLLECTIONS ON DISABILITY

• “Series: Disability from the South: Toward a Lexicon” in Somatosphere
  Edited by Tyler Zoanni F’18 and Michele Friedner
• The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 36 (1). Special issue on cognitive disability.
  Edited by Tyler Zoanni F’18 and Patrick McKearney

DEAF AND DISABILITY HISTORY

• “Differently abled: Africanisms, disability, and power in the age of transatlantic slavery” in Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions
  Written by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College, and Hannah Joyner
• Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson
  Written by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College, and Hannah Joyner
• “Comment: On the Borderland of Medical and Disability History” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• From Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass Incarceration after 1945
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Artificial parts, practical lives: modern histories of prosthetics
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• The Oxford Handbook of Disability History
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500–1800
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College

DISABILITY STUDIES

• Disability Incarcerated: Imprisonment and Disability in the United States and Canada
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• On the Margins of Citizenship: Intellectual Disability and Civil Rights in Twentieth-Century America
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Disability and difference in global contexts: Enabling a transformative body politic
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• “A Decolonial Disability Studies?” in Disability Studies Quarterly
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• “In Our Own Voice: African-American Stories of Oppression, Survival, and Recovery” in Off Our Backs
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Feminist, Queer, Crip
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• “Enabling Whom? Critical Disability Studies Now” in Lateral
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Black Madness :: Mad Blackness
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement Is Our People
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College
• Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country
  Submitted by Susan Burch F’19, Professor, American Studies, Middlebury College