Papers by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Disability Studies Quarterly, 2010
Disability Studies Quarterly, 2014
We dedicate this to the memory of Adrienne Asch, disability studies scholar, advocate, bioethicis... more We dedicate this to the memory of Adrienne Asch, disability studies scholar, advocate, bioethicist, colleague, friend.
ALTER - European Journal of Disability Research, 2017
Julia Pastrana was a Mexican woman whose " extraordinary " appearance led to her being displayed ... more Julia Pastrana was a Mexican woman whose " extraordinary " appearance led to her being displayed throughout Europe and America, first as a freak, then as a specimen. Recently, she was reburied in her birthplace. This essay considers the ways that Pas-trana's display both reinforces and challenges the lines between the self and other, human and non-human, ordinary and extraordinary that such spectacles rely upon. It further suggests how discursive systems, such as race, gender, normativity, and humanness intertwine in the social practices that constitute them. By analyzing how Pastrana's display and recent repatriation and burial in Sinaloa invest her body with different meanings, this essay traces more complexly the processes that socially mark human bodies in order to reveal and explicate the inner workings of representational systems , such as race, gender, ethnicity, and disability.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2015
A crucial challenge for critical disability studies is developing an argument for why disabled pe... more A crucial challenge for critical disability studies is developing an argument for why disabled people should inhabit our democratic, shared public sphere. The ideological and material separation of citizens into worthy and unworthy based on physiological variations imagined as immutable differences is what I call eugenic world building. It is justified by the idea that social improvement and freedom of choice require eliminating devalued human traits in the interest of reducing human suffering, increasing life quality, and building a more desirable citizenry. In this essay, I outline the logic of inclusive and eugenic world building, define and explain the role of the "normate" in eugenic logic, and provide a critical disability studies reading of the 2005 novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and its 2010 film adaptation. I argue that the ways of being in the world we think of as disabilities must be understood as the natural variations, abilities, and limitations inherent in human embodiment. When this happens, disability will be understood not as a problem to be eliminated but, rather, as a valid way of being in the world that must be accommodated through a sustaining and sustainable environment designed to afford access for a wide range of human variations.
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2016
The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 2017
Disability Studies Quarterly, 2007
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2015
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2012
The American Journal of Bioethics : AJOB, 2015
American Quarterly, 2013
At the 2012 Modern Languages Association conference, President Michael Bérubé affirmed his chosen... more At the 2012 Modern Languages Association conference, President Michael Bérubé affirmed his chosen theme of "access" by announcing at the Presidential Forum that disability studies could no longer be described as an emerging field of study. It has, declared Bérubé, EMERGED! Publications over the last three years, such as those under review here, confirm Bérubé's claim and mark the full emergence of a distinctive interdisciplinary field that has come to be called critical disability studies.
Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 2011
This article offers the critical concept misfit in an effort to further think through the lived i... more This article offers the critical concept misfit in an effort to further think through the lived identity and experience of disability as it is situated in place and time. The idea of a misfit and the situation of misfitting that I offer here elaborate a materialist feminist understanding of disability by extending a consideration of how the particularities of embodiment interact with the environment in its broadest sense, to include both its spatial and temporal aspects. The interrelated dynamics of fitting and misfitting constitute a particular aspect of world-making involved in material-discursive becoming. The essay makes three arguments: the concept of misfit emphasizes the particularity of varying lived embodiments and avoids a theoretical generic disabled body; the concept of misfit clarifies the current feminist critical conversation about universal vulnerability and dependence; the concept of misfitting as a shifting spatial and perpetually temporal relationship confers agency and value on disabled subjects.
Journal of Visual Culture, 2006
This article considers how staring informs the ways we know each other and the world around us. S... more This article considers how staring informs the ways we know each other and the world around us. Staring, a complex, nuanced, and meaning-laden social interaction, can take many forms: arrested, separated, or engaged. It is an intense encounter which is sometimes a random, idiosyncratic confrontation and at other times a highly structured social ritual driven by the collective impulse to look. This article argues that staring often defines the relationship between disabled and nondisabled individuals. More important, however, it seeks to redefine this relationship by imagining, perhaps counterintuitively, the object of the stare as determining the structure and outcome of the staring engagement. The staree may take charge of the encounter, in other words, using various strategies to both mediate and transform discomforting interaction into an unexpected opportunity for mutual transformation.
American Literature, 2004
National Women's Studies Association Journal, 2002
This essay aims to amplify feminist theory by articulating and fostering feminist disability theo... more This essay aims to amplify feminist theory by articulating and fostering feminist disability theory. It names feminist disability studies as an academic fi eld of inquiry, describes work that is already underway, calls for needed study and sets an agenda for future work in feminist disability studies. Feminist disability theory augments the terms and confronts the limits of the ways we understand human diversity, the materiality of the body, multiculturalism, and the social formations that interpret bodily differences. The essay asserts that integrating disability as a category of analysis and a system of representation deepens, expands, and challenges feminist theory. To elaborate on these premises, the essay discusses four fundamental and interpenetrating domains of feminist theory: representation, the body, identity, and activism, suggesting some critical inquiries that considering disability can generate within these theoretical arenas.
The SAGE Handbook of Identities, 2010
Public Scholarship by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
The Huffington Post, 2013
The Huffington Post, 2013
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Papers by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson
Public Scholarship by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson