Understanding Disability Studies and Performance Studies

This collection brings together scholarship and creative writing that brings together two of the most innovative fields to emerge from critical and cultural studies in the past few decades: Disability studies and performance studies. It draws on writings about such media as live performance art, photography, silent film, dance, personal narrative and theatre, using such diverse perspectives and methods as queer theory, gender, feminist, and masculinity studies, dance studies, as well as providing first publication of creative writings by award-winning poets and playwrights. This book was based on a special issue of Text and Performance Quarterly.

Bruce Henderson is Professor of speech communication at Ithaca College, where he teaches courses in performance studies, disability studies, and health communication. Noam Ostrander is Assistant Professor of social work at DePaul University and past president of the Society for Disability Studies.

1. Introduction Bruce Henderson and Noam Ostrander 2. Prologue: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Crip Poetry Jim Ferris RESEARCH REPORTS 3. Performing Amputation: The Photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin Ann Millett 4. Mobility: AXIS Dancers Push the Boundaries of Access Telory Davies 5. Dances and Discourses of (Dis)Ability: Heather Mills's Embodiment of Disability on Dancing with the Stars Margaret M. Quinlan and Benjamin R. Bates 6. A Crippling Deceit: Mendicancy and the Performance of Disability in Progressive America Sheila C. Moeschen 7. ''I Can't Be Standing Up Out There'': Communicative Performances of (Dis)Ability in Wheelchair Rugby Kurt Lindemann 8. Performing Unfeminine Femininity: A Performance of Identity Analysis of Bulimic Women's Personal Narratives JulieAnn Scott 9. Remaking (the) Discipline: Marking the Performative Accomplishment of (Dis)Ability Deanna L. Fassett and Dana L. Morella THE PERFORMANCE SPACE 10. BALL: Introduction Brian Lobel 11. BALL: The Script Brian Lobel 12. How to Tell a True Cancer Story Linda M. Park-Fuller 13. Performing Trauma: Witnessing BALL and the Implications for Autoperformance John T. Warren 14. The Hero Quest and the Hula Hoop: Brian Lobel's BALL Cara Gabriel 15. Dancing Autism: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Bedlam Petra Kuppers 16. Performing Depression: The Workman Theatre Project and the Making of Joy. A Musical. About Depression Kirsty Johnston 17. Why Disability Identity Matters: From Dramaturgy to Casting in John Belluso's Pyretown Carrie Sandahl 18. Just Try Having None Jim Ferris