Cognitive Disability Aesthetics explores the invisibility of cognitive disability in theoretical, historical, social, and cultural contexts. Benjamin Fraser's cutting edge research and analysis signals a second-wave in disability studies that prioritizes cognition. Fraser expands upon previous research into physical disability representations and focuses on those disabilities that tend to be least visible in society (autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia). Moving beyond established literary approaches analyzing prose representations of disability, the book explores how iconic and indexical modes of signification operate in visual texts. Taking on cognitive disability representations in a range of visual media (painting, cinema, and graphic novels), Fraser showcases the value of returning to impairment discourse. Cognitive Disability Aesthetics successfully reconfigures disability studies in the humanities and exposes the chasm that exists between Anglophone disability studies and disability studies in the Hispanic world.

The growth of the service economy, widespread acceptance of cosmetic technologies, expansion of global media, and the intensification of scrutiny of appearance brought about by the internet have heightened the power of beauty ideals in everyday life. A range of interdisciplinary contributions by an international roster of established and emerging scholars will introduce students to the emergence of debates about beauty, including work in history, sociology, communications, anthropology, gender studies, disability studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, philosophy, and psychology. The Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics is an essential reference work for students and researchers interested in the politics of appearance. Comprising over 30 chapters by a team of international contributors the Handbook is divided into six parts: Theorizing Beauty Politics Competing Definitions of Beauty Beauty, Activism, and Social Change Body Work Beauty and Labor Beauty and the Lifecourse The Routledge Companion to Beauty Politics is essential reading for students in Women and Gender Studies, Sociology, Media Studies, Communications, Philosophy, and Psychology.

A collection of eight essays by scholars who have published extensively within the disability studies literature, and who have helped build the field to its current state. Includes contributions from Robert Bogdan, Doug Biklen, Susan Schweik, and more.

"Cognitive Disability Aesthetics explores the invisibility of cognitive disability in theoretical, historical, social, and cultural contexts. Benjamin Fraser's cutting edge research and analysis signals a second-wave in disability studies that prioritizes cognition. Fraser expands upon previous research into physical disability representations and focuses on those disabilities that tend to be least visible in society (autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia). Moving beyond established literary approaches analyzing prose representations of disability, the book explores how iconic and indexical modes of signification operate in visual texts. Taking on cognitive disability representations in a range of visual media (painting, cinema, and graphic novels), Fraser showcases the value of returning to impairment discourse. Cognitive Disability Aesthetics successfully reconfigures disability studies in the humanities and exposes the chasm that exists between Anglophone disability studies and disability studies in the Hispanic world."--

This handbook provides a much-needed holistic overview of disability and sexuality research and scholarship. With authors from a wide range of disciplines and representing a diversity of nationalities, it provides a multi-perspectival view that fully captures the diversity of issues and outlooks. Organised into six parts, the contributors explore long-standing issues such as the psychological, interpersonal, social, political and cultural barriers to sexual access that disabled people face and their struggle for sexual rights and participation. The volume also engages issues that have been on the periphery of the discourse, such as sexual accommodations and support aimed at facilitating disabled people's sexual well-being; the socio-sexual tensions confronting disabled people with intersecting stigmatised identities such as LGBTBI or asexual; and the sexual concerns of disabled people in the Global South. It interrogates disability and sexuality from diverse perspectives, from more traditional psychological and sociological models, to various subversive and post-theoretical perspectives and queer theory. This handbook examines the cutting-edge, and sometimes ethically contentious, concerns that have been repressed in the field. With current, international and comprehensive content, this book is essential reading for students, academics and researchers in the areas of disability, gender and sexuality, as well as applied disciplines such as healthcare practitioners, counsellors, psychology trainees and social workers.

People with Down syndrome possess a culture. They are producers of culture. And in the 21st century, this culture is increasingly visible as a global phenomenon. Down Syndrome Culture examines Down syndrome alongside its social, cultural, and artistic representation. Author Benjamin Fraser draws upon neomaterialist and posthumanist approaches to disability as well as the work of disability theorists such as David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, Susan Antebi, Tobin Siebers, and Stuart Murray. By particularly focusing on Down syndrome, he showcases the unique place that it holds as an intellectual and developmental disability—one that fits between the social and medical models of disability—within the disability studies field. Down Syndrome Culture also pushes the traditionally Anglophone borders of disability studies by examining examples in Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese-language texts, and incorporating the work of thinkers in Iberian and Latin American studies. Through a close analysis of life writing, documentaries, and fiction films, the book emphasizes the central role of people with Down syndrome in contemporary cultural production. Chapters discuss the autobiography of Andy Trias Trueta, the social actors of the documentary Los niños [The Grown-Ups] (2016), dancers from Danza Mobile, and a variety of fiction films, challenging ableist understandings of disability in nuanced ways. Ultimately, this book reveals the lives, cultural work, and representations of people with trisomy 21 in an international context.

From intergalactic travel to the daily commute, enter this book and be transported to wonderful worlds where art and life intertwine and your ideas of both are upended. Chloe Watfern, a writer, transdisciplinary researcher, and maker, joined two world-leading supported studios to learn about the work of their vibrant collectives of neurodiverse artists. At Studio A, Thom Roberts paints, photocopies, animates, and performs, inviting us to understand people as trains and trains as people (among other things). Skye-Fox, a.k.a. Katerina the Steampunk Ringmaster, a.k.a. Skye Saxon, creates interconnected universes through soft sculpture, drawing, and storytelling. Lisa Tindall writes her life breathlessly in piles of notebooks, words from which she stitches into a dress that conveys some of her experiences. At Project Art Works, Kate Adams and her son Paul Colley walk familiar and strange places, capturing them on film. A forest of scribbles emerges in an art museum as people meet through graphite and charcoal on paper. Artists and makers like Tim Corrigan, Sharif Persaud, Carl Sexton, and Sam Smith move in and out of the frame, sharing biscuits, paint brushes, and wildernesses. In this book, written as a personal narrative informed by the latest thinking on neurodiversity and art, Chloe tells a tender and exhilarating story of the social and aesthetic dynamics at Studio A and Project Art Works, places like no other. In journeying alongside the complex and astonishing contemporary artists who work there, the book invites readers to radically reconsider their settled ideas of creativity, disability, and care, while learning about lives devoted to making.

Disability, Fourth Edition, is an indispensable tool for human services students in understanding disability from an empowerment perspective. The textbook is divided into three parts: Part I establishes a nontraditional context of disability, moving readers away from the perspective that people with disabilities are sick, passive, and deviant. Part II looks at groupings of disabilities placed within the context of the social definition of disability. Part III discusses human service practice with people with disabilities. Authors Mackelprang, Salsgiver, and Parrey establish the historical and societal context in which those living with disabilities are marginalized while offering a social ecological model and its three--biosocial, psychosocial, and social--cultural dimensions that students and instructors can employ. Readers will also be introduced to universal diversity theory, which draws from feminist, race, disability, and queer theories for an approach that is applicable across all diverse groups. Written from a North American perspective, the book also addresses disability laws, policies, and practices globally. Learning objectives guide students' reading and discussion questions highlight key ideas while text boxes and personal narratives bring the book to life.

What happens when a group traditionally defined as lacking the necessary capacities of citizenship is targeted by government programs that have made ‘citizenship inclusion’ their main goal? Combining theoretical perspectives of political philosophy, social theory, and disability studies, this book untangles the current state of Western intellectual disability politics following the replacement of state institutionalisation by independent and supported living, individual rights, and self-determination. Taking its cue from Foucault’s conception of ‘biopolitics’, denoting the government of the individuals and the totality of the population, its overarching argument is that the ambiguous positioning of people with intellectual disabilities with respect to the ideals of citizenship results in a regime of government that simultaneously includes and excludes people of this group. On the one hand, its members are projected to become ideal-citizens via the cultivation of citizenship capacities. On the other, the right to live independently and by their own choices is curtailed as soon as they are seen as failing with respect to the ideals of reason and rationality. Therefore, coercion, restraints, and paternalism, which were all supposed to end with deinstitutionalisation, are still ingrained in services targeting the group. In equal parts a theoretical work, advancing debates of critical disability theory, social theory, and post-structural philosophy, as well as an empirical engagement with the history of intellectual disability politics and the ways in which present day politics target the group, this book will be of interest to all students and scholars of disability studies, disability politics, and political theory.

Explores the way that characters and figures in Victorian literature and visual art encountered and observed the bodies of others, particularly those bodies which were aberrant, deformed, and disabled.