Literary and Cultural Disability Studies: British and Continental Perspectives

Prof. Dr. Klaus Birnstiel; Dr. Harriet Cooper; Dr. Johannes Görbert M.A., M.P.A.

doi:10.5771/9783988581099

Summary

This volume initiates a systematic dialogue between Anglophone and Continental European perspectives in literary and cultural disability studies. Emerging from a conference organised by the German Research Foundation (DFG) network “Inclusive Philology”, the twelve contributions demonstrate how disability functions not merely as thematic content but as a fundamental category of literary and cultural form. By connecting diverse methodological approaches – from phenomenological analyses to discourse analysis – the collection generates innovative theoretical frameworks for analysing embodied dif-ference. The volume addresses scholars in literary and cultural studies as well as anyone interested in trans-disciplinary disability studies approaches and cross-cultural academic exchange.
With contributions by Mona Baie | Jenny Bergenmar | Klaus Birnstiel | Harriet Cooper | Evelyn Dueck | David Feeney | Johannes Görbert | Martina King | Linda Leskau | Stuart Murray | Swaantje Otto | Tom Shakespeare

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2026
Copyright Year: 2026
ISBN-Print: 978-3-98858-108-2
ISBN-Online: 978-3-98858-109-9
Publisher: Rombach Wissenschaft, Baden-Baden
Series: Behinderung – Literatur – Kultur
Volume: 1
Language: English
Pages: 303
Product Type: Edited Book

PrefacePages 1 - 6 Download chapter (PDF)
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1. Theoretical Foundations and Critical Frameworks
2. Historical and Cultural Perspectives
3. Literary Form and Narrative Analysis
4. Contemporary Interventions and Life Writing
5. Bibliography
Acknowledgements Pages 21 - 22
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  1. Barnes’ first claim: what is disability?
  2. Barnes’ second claim: is disability ›mere difference‹?
  3. Conclusion
  4. Bibliography
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  1. Shaping Disciplines
  2. Trajectories
  3. Thinking Differently
  4. Indisciplined Lives
  5. Conclusion: Disciplines Again
  6. Bibliography
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  1. i. An ableist philology for a self-enabling nation: the ›heroic‹ beginnings of ›Germanistik‹, 1800 to 1880
  2. ii. Outside inquiry as happy list-making: the ›positivist turn‹ in the early 20th century
  3. iii. The short reign of ›social history‹, 1965 to 1985
  4. iv. The cultural turn, 1985 to present – and the current situation
  5. Conclusions and outlook: enabling literary disability studies in Germanistik
  6. Bibliography
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  1. 1 Introduction: classifying mental impairment in the NS era
  2. 2 Preconditions in the interwar period
  3. 3 Eugenic propaganda after 1933 – the NS media dictatorship
  4. 4 The medical novel as propaganda tool for eugenic crimes
  5. 5 Hellmuth Unger and his novel Mission and Conscience [Sendung und Gewissen], 1936
  6. Bibliography
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  1. The importance of sight
  2. Causes and remedies of eye diseases and blindness
  3. You must take care of your eyes
  4. Bibliography
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  1. Aesthetic testimony
  2. Well of the Saints and the unreliability of aesthetic testimony
  3. On Baile’s Strand and the (old) acquaintance principle
  4. Molly Sweeney and the asymmetry thesis
  5. The cost of aesthetic testimony scepticism within a gallery access context
  6. The dubious rationale underpinning verbal description guidelines
  7. The depletory impact of the objectivity imperative on approaches to art access
  8. Beauty on Trust
  9. From a hermeneutics of suspicion to a suspicion of hermeneutics
  10. Concluding reflections
  11. Bibliography
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  1. Narrating Disability
  2. Conclusion – Concepts of ›Healing‹
  3. Bibliography
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  1. Bibliography
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  1. 1. The Metamorphosis from a literary and cultural disability studies point of view
  2. 2. The »monstrous vermin«: Gregor Samsa’s disabilities
  3. 3. »It must go«: the abysses of a protonormalist environment
  4. 4. »Samsa has SMA«: Christoph Keller’s reception of The Metamorphosis
  5. 5. Beyond »kill or cure«: on flexible normalism in Keller’s »Bug Story«
  6. 6. From Kafka to Keller, or: from protonormalism to flexible normalism
  7. Bibliography
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  1. 1. Introduction
  2. 2. Giving Up on genre? A novelist’s ›memoir‹
  3. 3. Spatial structures I: Haunted homes
  4. 4. Spatial structures II: Disabling clinical spaces
  5. 5. Spatial structures III: Hospital space
  6. 6. Conclusion
  7. Bibliography
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  1. Positioning neurodivergence in theory
  2. Extending the vocabulary
  3. Neurodivergence in literature: previous research
  4. Neuroqueer worldmaking
  5. Reparative reading and caring for characters
  6. (Neuro)queering genre and temporality
  7. Concluding remarks
  8. Bibliography
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  1. Selves sell, disability sells
  2. Represent yourself! Emancipation or self-extraction?
  3. Disability as narrative prosthesis
  4. Sharing disability’s arrival
  5. Naming disability
  6. The long life of disability exceptionalism
  7. ›Everyone has a story to tell‹
  8. Concluding thoughts
  9. Bibliography
About the AuthorsPages 299 - 302 Download chapter (PDF)