Prof. Rodas presents a brief introduction to disability studies for beginners, with a focus on literary disability studies. Intended as reference slides for in-person presentation. Lehman College / CUNY

1. AN INTRODUCTION TO DISABILITY
THEORY
Julia Miele Rodas
Lehman College
Spring 2022

2. IS DISABILITY A “CONDITION”?

3. OR, AN IDENTITY?

4. DISABILITY STUDIES CARES
ABOUT
HOW DISABILITY
= IS REPRESENTED IN =
= CONTRIBUTES TO =
= MAKES =
CULTURE
Disability History
Disability (in) Literature
Disability Politics
Disability (in) Music
Disability (in) Art
Disability (in) STEM

6. Django Reinhardt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Frida Kahlo
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf
John Nash
Hellen Keller

8. DISABILITY RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
Activists fought for continue to fight
for equal access in everyday American
life:
• transportation
• education
• voting
• public spaces

9. REPRESENTATION MATTERS
Stereotypes cause harm
even when they are “positive”

10. STEREOTYPES OF WOMEN
IN AMERICAN CULTURE

11. STEREOTYPES OF BLACKNESS
IN AMERICAN CULTURE

12. STEREOTYPES OF DISABILITY
IN AMERICAN CULTURE

13. DISABILITY THEORY
Literary Disability

14. APPLICATIONS

15. DISABILITY AS STEREOTYPE
Cultural
Representations of
Disability
are (almost always)
Symbolic, not
Realistic

17. “A CHRISTMAS
CAROL”
Despite Tiny Tim's banalities - his “little crutch, and
... his limbs supported by an iron frame," his "God
bless us every one!" his "plaintive little voice," and
his being characterized by his bereaved father as
"patient and mild" … there is yet another Tim,
lurking beneath the tedious little cripple, a Tim
whose identity might seem to contest the cloying
goodness of his own outward manifestation. This
subtle shadow of the Tiny Tim with whom all are so
familiar has an "active little crutch."
“Charles Dickens and the Uses
of Disability”
Julia Miele Rodas
Dickens Studies Annual
2004

18. JOHN MILTON

19. NEUTRALIZING
DISABILITY
Storytelling that relies on disability as a
site of conflict typically “resolves” that
conflict by eliminating disability at the end.
CURE or KILL
David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder call this
pattern “narrative prosthesis.”

20. WELCOME TO DISABILITY STUDIES …