CFP Panel at ESSE Conference, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 31st August-4th September 2026

Panel #47

There has been a notable upsurge in the numbers of literary texts featuring neurodivergent characters in recent years, many of which offer innovative aesthetic and narrative styles and which work hard to render visible, without pathologizing, the challenges and joys experienced by neurodivergent individuals living in a neurotypical world. This panel aims to bring together scholars working on prose writing in English from any geographical area to discuss the philosophy and ethics of neurodevelopmental diversity as these are tackled in contemporary fiction and life writing. The goal of the panel will be to identify, far beyond mere character studies or the realm of psychology, the emergent aesthetics of neurodivergence, and to discuss the various regional, national, and global frictions and connections in the representation of the broad spectrum of its manifestations (Autism, ADHD, dyspraxia etc.).

Robert Chapman (2023) has shown that what he calls “neurodivergent liberation” will only come about in the event of a “shift … away from the dominant ‘pathology paradigm’ (5) and the “Empire of Normality”, an “apparatus of scientific, administrative, cultural, and legal impositions” (17). Gabor and Daniel Maté make a similar point in The Myth of Normal (2022) while Steve Silberman reminds us in Neurotribes (2015) that autism “is not a single unified entity but a cluster of underlying conditions [… which] produce a distinctive constellation of behaviour and needs that manifest in different ways” (510). He suggests no longer “viewing this gift” as “a puzzle to be solved and eliminated” and rather “as a valuable part of humanity’s genetic legacy” (511).

This panel will investigate the ways in which contemporary Anglophone writers actively work to reframe, render visible, and depathologize neurodivergence in recent prose narratives, with specific attention to the aesthetic innovations this gives rise to. Please send your proposals (300 words) for 20 minute presentations to Fiona McCann (fiona.mccann@sorbonne-universite.fr) and Dilâra Yilmaz (yilmaz@anglistik.uni-kiel.de) by 31st January 2026.

Bibliography

Chapman, Robert, The Empire of Normality. Neurodiversity and Capitalism. London: Pluto, 2023.

Maté, Gabor & Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal. Illness, Health and Healing in a Toxic Culture. London: Penguin, [2022] 2024.

Silberman, Steve, Neurotribes. The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. London: Allen & Unwin, 2016.