Disability Journal Expands Focus
In 2009 the innovative Journal of Literary Disability is moving to Liverpool University Press under the new title Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies. It will continue to focus on the literary representation of disability, but cultural studies will now be added to the multidisciplinary mix.
With an editorial board of 50 internationally renowned scholars, the journal is central to the literary disability movement that is changing the face of literary studies on a global scale.
Special issues have included Representations of Cognitive Impairment, guest edited by Dr. Lucy Burke, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan University; Disability and the Dialectic of Dependency, guest edited by Dr. Michael Davidson, Vice Chair, Department of Literature, University of California; and Disability and/as Poetry, guest edited by Dr. Jim Ferris, Faculty Associate, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin.
The first issue in the new format, JLCDS 3.1: Deleuze, Disability and Difference, will be a special issue, guest edited by Dr. Petra Kuppers, Associate Professor of English, Theatre, and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan; and Dr. James Overboe, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University. Many disability scholars have been wary of utilizing poststructuralism as a means to disrupt ableism. But there is much nuance in poststructuralist thought and its relation to representational politics, and JLCDS 3.1 hopes to push disability studies further along its journey into this territory.
