cfp.english.upenn.edu

Call for Papers: Edited Volume

Libre acceso: Critical disability studies in Latin American literature and film

Co-Editors: Susan Antebi (University of Toronto) and Beth E. Jörgensen (University of Rochester)

Disability studies theory has had a significant impact on research in the humanities over the past two decades, particularly with regard to British and North American cultural production. In contrast, relatively few studies to date have engaged Latin American literary or filmic works through a disability studies-informed focus. Yet disability has a pervasive presence in both canonical and less familiar works of Latin American literature and film, emerging through reflections on the experience and meaning of corporeal and intellectual differences, as well as through representations of disabled characters. These representations and reflections raise questions about the biological bases and the cultural constructions of illness and disability, processes of stigmatization, appearance-based discrimination, body identity, medical history, physical torture, colonial violence, and the racialization of corporeal and cognitive difference. In addition, in the wake of colonialism and the ongoing crisis of global capitalism, percentages of disabled people in the Global South, including Latin America, remain high with respect to more economically privileged world regions, thus suggesting the need for an interrogation of Latin American disability politics in international context.
For this edited volume, the first of its kind in our field, we seek original essays in English that employ disability studies perspectives on all genres of literature and film from all countries of Latin America, produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each essay will identify a significant issue in contemporary disability studies, contextualize it for the time period and place of production of the work(s) to be studied, and structure the analysis around a well-defined theoretical approach.

Topics may include
Disability identity Disability rights movements, human rights
Disability and/as performance Complex embodiment
Disability and sexuality
Disability and drag Diverse disability studies models: medical, social, etc.
Passing Disability in biopolitics
Intersections and assemblages: disability, gender, race, class, sexual orientation Disability life-writing
“Overcoming” disability
Feminism and disability Disability in popular culture
Disability and critical race theory Normalcy and discourses of ableism
Disability and psychoanalysis Metaphors and embodiments of nationalism

Timeline for submissions:
September 15, 2012: 250-350 word proposals
No later than October 15, 2012: Editors will reply to all authors submitting proposals.
February 28, 2013: Completed essays. Length 20-30 pages, including notes and works cited.
Inquiries and submissions by email to: Susan Antebi (susan.antebi@utoronto.ca) and Beth Jörgensen (beth.jorgensen@rochester.edu)