New Books in Disability Studies

Today I talked to Autumn Wilke of Grinnell College about her book (co-authored with Nancy J. Evans, Ellen M. Broido, and Kirsten R. Brown) Disability in Higher Education: A Social Justice Approach (Jossey-Bass, 2017). Disability in Higher Education examines how disability is conceptualized in higher education and ways in which students, faculty, and staff with disabilities are viewed and served on...

Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. In The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America (University of Illinois Press, 2021), historian Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical,...

People with disabilities have always struggled to make ends meet. Finding a job you can actually do, a housing situation you can afford that meets your needs, and simply going about the various daily tasks most of us take for granted all compound to make life under capitalism especially challenging. This makes the many disabled people who not only rise to meet their life-circumstances but go beyon...

This book cuts new ground by applying a human rights lens of analysis to domestic mental health laws. It makes a timely contribution into the discourse regarding mental health, supported decision-making and disability rights in the post CRPD era. In A New Era for Mental Health Law and Policy: Supported Decision-Making and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Cambridge Univ...

Neurodisability and the Criminal Justice System: Comparative and Therapeutic Responses (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021) delves into an under-researched and little understood but extremely pertinent issue in law; the prevalence of neurodisability within criminal justice systems. Considering the challenges faced by both juveniles and adults with neuorodisabilities who come into contact with the crimi...

From 1942 through 1972, American biomedical researchers deliberately infected people with hepatitis. Government-sponsored researchers were attempting to discover the basic features of the disease and the viruses causing it, and develop interventions that would quell recurring outbreaks. Drawing from extensive archival research and in-person interviews, Sydney Halpern traces the hepatitis program f...

Today I talked to Sarah and Larry Nannery about their new book What to Say Next: Successful Communication in Work, Life, and Love with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Tiller Press, 2021). What’s it like to live a life where there’s a time delay as you process what others are saying, what it might mean, and how you feel in response? Sarah Nannery knows that experience intimately, gaining in ability over...

Amid a string of fall 2021 news reports about past-due exonerations and (white) self-defense that document the limits of racial justice within the U.S. legal system, Pain and Shock in America: Politics, Advocacy, and the Controversial Treatment of People with Disabilities (Brandeis University Press, 2021) becomes an even more relevant and timely book. Dr. Jan Nisbet, who authored the book with con...

Of the dozens of juicy questions for future inquiry that Dr. Michelle Nario-Redmond provides at the end of Ableism: The Causes and Consequences of Disability Prejudice (Published by Wiley in 2021), the following stands out the most to me, in my various group-membership roles: How do we build common ground between disadvantaged groups for effective cross-impairment coalitions? Though it seemed impo...

Vulnerable narratives of fatherhood are few and far between; rarer still is an ethnography that delves into the practical and emotional realities of intensive caregiving. Grounded in the intimate everyday lives of men caring for children with major physical and intellectual disabilities, Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities (U California Press, 2021)...

What does ‘sexual citizenship’ mean in practice for people with mobility impairments who may need professional support to engage in sexual activity? Sexual Citizenship and Disability: Understanding Sexual Support in Policy, Practice and Theory (Routledge, 2021) explores this subject through empirical investigation based on case studies conducted in four countries – Sweden, England, Australia and t...

In Clustered Injustice and The Level Green (Legal Action Group, 2020), Professor Luke Clements tackles the problem of the way in which "our legal system generates and exacerbates disadvantage." Examining the interconnectedness of disadvantage faced by many minorities - such as people who are homeless, Roma, Gypsies and Travelling people, disabled people, those within the criminal justice system, p...

"They don't know me. They don't know what I'm capable of." Diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, a form of autism, as a toddler, Anthony Ianni wasn't expected to succeed in school or participate in sports, but he had other ideas. As a child, Ianni told anybody who would listen, including head coach Tom Izzo, that he would one day play for the Michigan State Spartans. Centered: Autism, B...

Jacki Edry's Moving Forward: Reflections on Autism, Neurodiversity, Brain Surgery, and Faith (2021) is a journey between the worlds of autism, neurodiversity, brain surgery recovery, and faith. It provides a rare glimpse into how sensory and neurological processing affect functioning and thought, through the eyes of a professional, parent, and woman who has experienced them firsthand. This book pr...

In The Political Economy of Stigma: HIV, Memoir, Medicine, and Crip Positionalities (Ohio State UP, 2021), Ally Day offers a compelling critique of neoliberal medical practices in the US by coupling an analysis of HIV memoir with a critical examination of narrative medicine practice. Using insights from feminist disability studies and crip theory, Day argues that stories of illness and disability—...

With a focus on the court diversion of disabled people, Disability, Criminal Justice and Law: Reconsidering Court Diversion (Routledge 2020) undertakes a theoretical and empirical examination of how law is complicit in debilitating disabled people. In our post-institutionalisation era, diversion of disabled people from the court process is often assumed to be humane, therapeutic and socially just....

Dr Daniel Gibbs is one of 50 million people worldwide with an Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. Unlike most patients with Alzheimer's, however, Dr Gibbs worked as a neurologist for twenty-five years, caring for patients with the very disease now affecting him. Also unusual is that Dr Gibbs had begun to suspect he had Alzheimer's several years before any official diagnosis could be made. Forewarned by...

Understanding ADHD is based on an in-depth, filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Stephen Hinshaw, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Stephen Hinshaw is an expert in the fields of clinical child and adolescent psychology and developmental psychopathology, as well as stigma, preventive interventions and dehumanization related to mental illness. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas...

Stigma about mental illness makes life doubly hard for people suffering from mental or emotional distress. In addition to dealing with their conditions, they must also contend with social shame and secrecy. But by examining how mental illness is conceived of and treated in other cultures, we can improve our own perspectives in the Western world. In his new book, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Create...

Autism: A Genetic Perspective is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Jay Gargus, Professor of Physiology, Biophysics and Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Autism Research and Translation at UC Irvine. This wide-ranging conversation examines the recent explosion in our genetic understanding and its implications for the future of medicine, together with the imp...

Exploring Autism is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and one of the world’s leading experts on autism Uta Frith, Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London. Topics that are examined in this extensive conversation are what autism actually is, the reasons behind the increased number of diagnoses over the last few years, autism spectrum disorders, As...

Mental Capacity in Relationship: Decision-Making, Dialogue, and Autonomy (Cambridge University Press, 2017), challenges the current legal landscape of mental capacity law and human rights legislation, arguing that assessments of mental capacity should take account the role of relationships in the decision-making capacity of individuals with impairments and mental disorders. Dr. Camillia Kong's is...

Building on work in feminist studies, queer studies and critical race theory, this volume challenges the universality of propositions about human nature, by questioning the boundaries between predominant neurotypes and 'others', including dyslexics, autistics and ADHDers. Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm (Routledge, 2020) is the first work of its kind to bring cutting-edge research...

Drawing on her own experiences with late-onset disability and its impact on her sex life, along with her expertise as a cultural critic, Jane Gallop explores how disability and aging work to undermine one's sense of self. She challenges common conceptions that equate the decline of bodily potential and ability with a permanent and irretrievable loss, arguing that such a loss can be both temporary...

The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their effectiveness, rather, these laws cling to outdated notions of disability, mental illness and mental disorder why deny the fundamental rights of this category of people on an equal basis with all others. In Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coerci...