Disability and Art

Now available in paperback and the winner of numerous awards, this is the first popular history of the disability rights movement. Includes conversations with couragous people who fight for freedom of movement, meaningful employment, and a life of dignity and promise.

Rosemarie Thomson's groundbreaking anthology probes America's disposition toward the visually different. The book's essays fall into four main categories: historical explorations of American freak shows in the era of P.T. Barnum; the articulation of the freak in literary and textual discourses; contemporary relocations of freak shows; and theoretical analyses of freak culture.

Disability has always been a preoccupation of American society and culture. From antebellum debates about qualification for citizenship to current controversies over access and reasonable accommodations, disability has been present, in penumbra if not in print, on virtually every page of American history. Yet historians have only recently begun the deep excavation necessary to retrieve lives shrouded in religious, then medical, and always deep-seated cultural, misunderstanding. This volume opens up disability's hidden history.

The Fourth Edition of the Disability Studies Readerbreaks new ground by emphasizing the global, transgender, homonational, and posthuman conceptions of disability. Including physical disabilities, but exploring issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities, this edition explores more varieties of bodily and mental experience. New histories of the legal, social, and cultural give a broader picture of disability than ever before.

Ronald Berger provides students with a comprehensive, accessible introduction to the key themes and controversies in disability studies. This innovative textbook: provides historical context, from ancient times to the present, traces disability's impact throughout the life course, gives prominence to the voices of people with disabilities, explores popular culture's role in distorting ideas about disability, addresses emerging ethical issues, such as the implications of genetic selection.

A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently.