This Presentation was given as PhD Progress Review Presentation for Term 3 before Department Research Committee at Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar ( India) on April 27, 2019.

1. PhD Progress Review Presentation
Department Research Committee
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University, Bhavnagar
Date: April 27, 2019
Aahuti Dhandhukia
Asst Prof (English), Government Engineering College, Bhavnagar
Research Scholar (PhD), M K Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar, (India)
Year: 2017-2020
Registration no: 1782
Registration Date:23/06/2017

2. Title: An Exploration of
Disability in the Light of Self,
Relationship and Social
Perspective: A Study of
Select Novels

3. Hypothesis
The human experience and lives of Persons with
Disabilities are full of pain, sufferings, miseries
and anguish. The physical impairment reduces
their ability but the society’s prejudiced
perspectives to their impaired body affect their
self-conception and human relationship causing
their humiliation, isolation, deprivation and
marginalization in the society. Understanding the
total effect of Body, Mind, Relationship and Social
Perspectives through literature develops the
insight to understand Persons with Disabilities for
their acceptance, inclusion and integration with
dignity in human society.

4. Research Problems
•The person’s impairment creates ‘body difference’. How are
these ‘different bodies’ perceived by the persons with
disabilities themselves, people in relationship and society?
•How do these ‘different bodies’ affect the mindscape of
Persons with Disability in terms of self esteem and human
dignity, confidence and decision making in life?
•How do the Persons with Disabilities relate themselves with
others? How do others perceive them?
•What are the social perspectives to the Persons with
Disabilities – to their body, mind and relationship?
•How are the lives of the Persons with Disabilities shaped
as the total effect of self, people in relationship and society?
•How are the characters with Disabilities presented in
literature with above mentioned reference?

5. Previous Progress Presentation
Coursework Completion
Type of Source Identified Studied
Books 40 15
Print/e-journal
articles
500 50
Websites/
Web-resources
60 20
Legislative
Documents
15 8
Organizational
Report
5 4
Newspaper Articles 25 25
PhD Thesis 5 2

6. Disability was prevalent in history
everywhere but absent in histories we
write.
- Duglas Baynton
Disability Studies Reader, 2013

7. Disability Studies Reader
Lennard J Davis,ed. Routledge, 2013
•Not Disability but Construction of Normalcy is a problem.
•Mytho-poetic’ bodies of Greek gods established ‘ideals’-
unattainable in society.
•Concept of ‘Norm’ as average entered with statistics in
19th century.
•“ Ugliness in body and vices in moral”.
•Eugenics implications for Disability Studies
•Disabled children’s projection for sympathy charity fund
•Flaw of Goffman: Stigma is contextual and arbitrary
difference.
•Oe’s ‘ A Healing Family’: passing from ‘shock’ to ‘
acceptance’ and reinventing of literary narrative
•Flaws of Social Model of Disability
•What different terms for intellectually disabled connote
“ Hegemony of Normalcy is
profound and prevalent.”

8. Stigma
Notes on Management of Spoiled Identity
Erving Goffman, Penguin Books, 1990
•Stigma originated from Greek referring to the signs
displayed on body showing bad about moral status.
•Today it is viewed as disgrace than bodily evidences.
•Human attributes incongruous with stereotype and
hence disapproved are stigmatized.
•Society’ s power structure imposes stigma.
•Reduces social identity to specific stigmatized
attributes.
• Physical disability is first category of stigma
construction, immediately followed by intellectual
disability- external is internalized.
•Language of relationship is more important than
stigmatized attributes.
•Self Conception and response- defense, hostility,
corrective measure, isolation, ‘ mixed contacts’

9. Stigma: The Experience of Disability
Paul Hunt,ed. Geoffrey Chapman, 1966
( via Disability Archive UK)
“The problem of disability lies not only in the impairment of function, but
more importantly in our relation with normal people”.-Paul Hunt
This ‘uncomfortable book’ is pioneering book to give rise to disability
activist movement of 1960-80.
All authors have physical/, intellectual, congenital/acquired disability. It is
authentic record of their functional impairment and being disabled against
social discrimination and environmental barriers..
Places Disability from private sphere of Medical Model to public domain
of social concern and action.
“ To give my life to the best of my ability: to put the most in and get most
out.” –Mona Younis

10. The Identities of Persons
Amelie Oskenberg Rorty, ed. Uni of California Press, 1976
• Interdisciplinarity of Disability Studies, Literature and
Philosophy
•Different layers of identity according to agency of
free-will and control
•Character: Literary Personae, assemblage of traits
•Figure: behaviour of imitating the archetype
•Person: exercises the agency of free will, makes
decisions, takes actions and accepts responsibility of
the same
•Soul: Agency of choice turns inward
•Self: possessor of own unique qualities as property
•Individual: owner of their collective experience,
uniqueness, resistance to type
•Presence: supreme level surpassing ego , free from
desire to dominate or control worldly experiences
Our society’s power
structures has treated the
disabled as less than
person, depriving them
from basic human rights.
- Amelie Rorty

11. Mindreadings: Literature and Psychiatry
Femi Oyebode, ed. Byword Books, 2009
It is dangerous for medical practitioner to treat as only
body organs. Literature stimulates insight into common
and shared patterns of response to critical situations,
or into unique and individual responses to crises and
enrich language and thought of practitioner.
Literary account of illness and suffering arouses
existential empathy.
Few people have experience of knowing intellectually
disabled and people carry image of intellectually
disabled as they are portrayed in literature and
cinema.
Analysis of literary representation of intellectually
disabled concerns: physical description, behavioural
description, causation, narrative device, symbolic
representation, emphasis on ethical representation.

12. Interview on Acquired Disability
Interview of Mr. Bhupendra Tripathi,
Manager, RBI, Ahmedabad who
acquired blindness while curing spinal
cancer. 12 Jan, 2019, Bhavnagar
Questions based on vulnerability of
congenital vs acquired disability
Sharing his experience of acquired
disability and personal, adjustment,
professional accommodation, limitation
of assistive technology and compelled
isolation at workplace

13. Visit to the Library of Gandhi Mahila College,
Bhavnagar( 10 Feb, 2019)

14. Reading ‘Literature Review’ of Select PhD Theses
• Aspects Considered-
• Types of sources
• Inter-relevance of sources
• Descriptive /evaluative
• Identifying research gap
• Academic language
• Titling this chapter
• Literature Review-
• Present status of disabled from
reports by WHO, UN
• Historical survey in different culture
• Religion and myth on disability
• Medical Model
• Social Model
• Challenges and interdisciplinary
approach- rise of Disability Studies
• Interplay of physio-psycho-socio
factors
• Depiction in literature
• Exploring physical, intellectual,
acquired disability in select novel as

15. Primary Source Reading
• Anna Bolles acquires Multiple Sclerosis at the
young age of 24.
• First person narrative, disability mentioned on
first page
• Phases of remittance and relapse
• English teacher at a private school
• Love affair with rich, successful, non-disabled
Joe Malone – dilemma of marriage
• Mother-daughter relationship
• American society with progressive Disability
law
“ I was not ready to believe that I had MS.”–
She accepts marriage when she can accept
her disability.

16. Primary Source Reading
• “ Things break… Promises break, Hearts
break.” Barriers and broken images
• Willow O’Keefe is a child with osteogenesis
Imperfecta- brittle bones. Middle class family
and financial constraints
• Impairment, pain and hospitalization
• Mobility restriction and social exclusion
• Medical ethics and law
• Moral conflict between selective abortion
and existence of disabled children
• Ignorance to normal sibling
• Notion of parental love and care
• Others perception and Willow’s self -
conception

17. Conference Paper Presentation

18. Journal Publications

19. Journal Publications

20. Journal Publication
• Disability and socio-cultural
perspectives- marginalization,
isolation, deprivation
• Social activism and rise of Disability
Studies
• Significance of literary disability studies
• Void of disability research in Indian-
English fiction
• Portrayal of Physical and intellectual
disability
• Total effect of body, mind, relationship
and social perspectives

21. Abstract Preparation
• Two papers are under consideration
1. Stigma and Self- conception in Salman Rushdie’s the
Moor’s Last Sigh
2. “ You would Continue to Break: Not Bones but
Barriers”: Child’s Severe Disability and Crisis, Care and
Loss in Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care