The Disability Studies Reader, Second Edition (Hardcover)

~ Lennard Davis (Editor) "We live in a world of norms..." (more)
Key Phrases: anxious speaker, disabling images, disability studies, New York, Harvard University Press, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The second edition of The Disability Studies Reader builds and improves upon the classic first edition, which has sold well over 6000 copies since 1999. As a field, disability studies burst onto the scene across the social sciences and humanities in the 1990s, and the first edition of the reader gathered the best work that had been written on the subject, including essays by famous authors such as Susan Sontag and Erving Goffman. The new edition is more global in its coverage and adds material on genetic testing, the human genome, queer studies, and issues in developing countries. The size of the audience has grown since the first edition's publication, and the second edition's new material will make it even more useful for courses on the subject. Courses on the subject have mushroomed in the past ten years, and can now be found across the social sciences, humanities, and behavioral sciences.

From the Back Cover

"This is an indispensable collection, bringing together foundational arguments in disability studies and provocative new work from emerging young scholars in the field. If you're curious as to why (and how) disability studies has stimulated so much debate in the humanities, The Disability Studies Reader is a great place to start finding out."
--Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Penn State University

"There is simply no area of contemporary life-- be it medical, economic, educational, juridical, athletic, architectural, culinary, recreation, entertainment--that goes unaddressed in the disability studies literature. Just when you thought that there was nothing new to say about social construction, difference, the performative, the universal, the particular and the body, disability studies comes along to demonstrate both the theoretical and practical urgencies to which these and other too often abstract terms really refer. If you've been hearing about disability studies, but didn't quite know what to make of it, this is the anthology for you."
--Stanley Fish, Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and Law, Florida International University

"A classic just got even better! Only a few disciplines can claim a founding text. For disability studies, with its far-reaching implications for other fields, this is it. It all starts--and re-starts in a superb second edition--right here."
--David B. Morris, author of The Culture of Pain

"This revised edition demonstrates the significant evolution of the field. Greater attention to such vital issues as globalization, gender, critical race studies, and cultural constructions appear in cogent new essays that enhance and complement the collection. As with the original Disability Studies Reader , this edition challenges its readers with pioneering studies of theoretical models and the politics of disability.
--Susan Burch, author of Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II

"This collection of scholarly essays strikes at the concept of normalcy and touches us on both personal and societal levels. From an academic perspective, the field of disability studies broadens our race, class, and gender discussions to include layers of identity and moments of connection. The Disability Studies Reader challenges us to reexamine human difference."
--I. King Jordan, President, Gallaudet University --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (August 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415953332
• ISBN-13: 978-0415953337
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #6,434,859 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific collection of essays, fiction, and poetry, April 8, 2001

By	Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Disability Studies Reader (Paperback)

This is a purposeful and strong collection of essays, fiction, and poetry that serves to illuminate a comparatively new (although long in coming) and vibrant discipline, Disability Studies, which, according to editor (and contributor) Dr. Lennard Davis, "is both an academic field of inquiry and an area of political activity."

Davis has written an elegant introduction that is ideological - with good reason. He provides an overview and defines the field and its terms. Davis cites many of the developers and 'early' thinkers (ancient times to the present) of disability studies and, in summary, asserts that Disability Studies is not about "sensitizing" "normal" persons. Disability Studies is, rather, "in favor of advocacy, investigation, inquiry, archeology, genealogy, dialectic, and deconstruction."

The book (which does not have to be read in any particular order) is divided into seven main sections: "Historical Perspectives," "Politics of Disability," "Stigma and Illness," "Gender and Disability," "Disability and Education," "Disability and Culture," and finally a small section of fiction and poetry.

Davis' "Constructing Normalcy" appears first, appropriately so, for in my view it's really required reading. There is a generous selection of essays on Deafness and Deaf culture. (Davis himself grew up as the child of Deaf parents). Some of my favorite essays: Harlan Hahn's "Advertising the Acceptably Employable Image," on the relationship between capitalism and disability; Susan Wendell's deeply personal and thoughtful "Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability," in which she points out, "When you listen to this culture in a disabled body, you hear how often health and physical vigor are talked about as if they were moral virtues." Susan Sontag writes on AIDS and metaphor. "Blindness and Art" by Nicholas Mirzoeff is complex, difficult, and worth the effort. In addition there are a number of incredibly powerful historical discussions.

This is a terrific textbook - for it contains a wealth of material that is challenging and engaging. Readers interested in this field and its ideas will be pleased. As a reference work it'll doubtless be useful for many years. It's solid and complex, and definitely worth reading.

19 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Enforcing Normalcy" A Mini-Review, January 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Disability Studies Reader (Hardcover)

The most priceless part of this book-- is the material he adds to the story of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's polio disability & his closetry about it. Like "Washington became a ramped city...." Like reporting that any press photographers who took pix of FDR being carried (suchas- to get into his car) had their film "confiscated" and destroyed by the Secret Service. Someday some innovative historian will note that as a person with a disability-- FDR was himself within the scope of the groups that the Nazis scapegoated & killed. (In the mid 1930's, they killed every disabled person in every custodial institution in Germany.) Thus, FDR was the hero in fighting a war that was-- in part-- a defense of his own kind.And he felt he had to hide that fact, I'm looking forward to the upcoming "From Charity To Confrontation: A History Of The Modern Disabled Rights Movement" by Fleisher (sp?) & Zames, from Temple Univ. Press. Freida Zames has been a disabled activist for decades. Her book should blow away the few similar titles.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disability studies reader, October 10, 2007

By	Jose A. Gonzalez "Jose Gonzalez" (Dover, New Jersey) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Disability Studies Reader, Second Edition (Paperback)

I just got the book for a disability studies class. Book was in excellent conditions. However, this book is complicated and boring to read.