Redefining Disability: (12 Personal/Public Scholarship)

The reality of disability—of what it means to be disabled—has primarily been written by non-disabled people. Disability and disabled individuals are often described with pity, presented as burdens, or are background figures in larger non-disabled narratives. Redefining Disability challenges the outsider-dominated approach to disability by centering the disabled experience.

This edited volume, featuring all disabled authors and creators, combines traditional academic works with personal reflections, visual art, and poetry. These works address disability and race, sexuality and disability, disability cultures, accommodation, self-diagnosis, and how we manage the obstacles ableist institutions place in our way. The authors address a variety of disabilities, including sensory, chronic pain, mobility, developmental disorders, and mental illness. It is through these testimonies that we hope to redefine disability on our terms; to clearly state that disability is not a bad word, and that all disabled lives have value.

Redefining Disability is interdisciplinary, with broad application for undergraduate courses, graduate seminars, or to read for pleasure. Each entry contains discussion questions and/or activities for educators to use in the classroom.

Table of Contents:
Preface Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction  Paul D. C. Bones, Jessica Smartt Gullion and Danielle Barber 1 Existing in a Mortal Form and Other Disabling Experiences  E. J. K. Brimner and R. McGuire 2 Disabled Humans and Our Non-Human Animal Companions  Paul D. C. Bones Pet Profile: Charlie  Aparna Nair 3 Disability Discourse Stuck in a Black/White Binary: Embodying a Black and Disabled Identity as a Mixed-Race Person  Cassandra Lovelock 4 Plum Tomato: Solanum lycopersicum  Ellen Samuels 5 Disability Aesthetics: A Crip Artistry Manifesto  Aurora Berger 6 Life on the Line  Aurora Berger 7 Finding My Way in a Society Where I Don’t Fit  Jill Richardson Pet Profile: Mac  Valerie and Chase Novack 8 Misfit in the Academy: Succeeding as a Visually Impaired Scholar in Australia  Sheelagh Daniels-Mayes Pet Profile: Mudkip  Ari 9 Justice vs. Injustice: Poetic Dialogue about the Meaning of Disability Justice among People Labelled/with Intellectual Disability  Anonymous, Anonymous, Anonymous, Nicholas Herd, Anonymous, Doreen Kalifer, with support from Erin Kuri and Ann Fudge Schormans 10 Inspiration Porn and Desperation Porn: Disrupting the Objectification of Disability in Media Kara B. Ayers and Katherine A. Reed Pet Profile: Scribbles  Melanie Coughlin 11 Tap Tap Tap  Marie Gagnon 12 Adaptation from the Margins: Toward a Crip Theatre  Christopher Bryant Pet Profile: Pepper  Brian 13 Diagnosis Limbo  Danielle Barber Pet Profile: Luther & Layla  Danielle Barber 14 Successful Sad  Vanessa Ellison Pet Profile: Monkey  Emily Dall’Ora Warfield 15 Ddeaf Adjacency: Liminal Conditions of Not Hearing  Megan Marshall 16 S-I-L-I-C-O-N-E Inject-Ear | Silicone Injections: In American Sign Language (ASL) Gloss and English  Raymond Luczak 17 Utensils and Fire  Jessica Spears Williams 18 Seeing Brains: Shakespeare, Autism, and Self-Identification  Nicholas R. Helms Pet Profile: Pike Trickleg  Lauren (aka L.W. Salinas) 19 Hot Girl Bummer: Achieving Disabled Sexual Liberation in an Ableist World  Katherine O’Connell Pet Profile: Abacus  Kimberly C. Merenda 20 Selected Poems  Jessi Aaron Pet Profile: Opal, Orbit, & Ruby  Aubree Evans 21 Maybe Do Talk to Strangers on the Internet? An Interview with Corin de Parsons Frietas  Corin Parsons de Frietas (with Paul D. C. Bones) Pet Profile: Finn & Bear  Corin Parsons de Freitas 22 Finding Empowerment in the Middle: Navigating Hidden Disabilities in Academia  Summer M. Jackson Pet Profile: Rocko (More Formally Known as Rocko Taco)  Summer M. Jackson 23 Taking Center Stage in the Face of Shame and Scars  Jasmine (Jaz) Gray Pet Profile: Aisling & Truthe  Jennifer Stahl 24 Assistive Tech, Assertive Tech  Cole Sorensen 25 Modern Day Changelings: On Being an Autistic Parent of an Autistic Child  Alison Kelly 26 Stone, Water, Land, Spine  Elizabeth Glass Pet Profile: Maximus Aurelius Gullion, Guardian of the Realm, Slayer of Demons, Friend to Unicorn and Dragon, Defender of Squeaky Toys & Spartacus the Mighty  Jessica Smartt Gullion 27 Cancer Isn’t Like a Movie, But If It Was It’d Be a Horror Flick  Terri Juneau Eklund Pet Profile: Bacon & Pancake  Terri Juneau Eklund 28 “It’s Meant to Be a Hazing Process”: Deciphering Ableism Surrounding Academic Accommodations  Corey Reutlinger Pet Profile: Captain Jack Harkness & Pippa Millicent Tiny Panther  Tara Elliot 29 Night of the Living Ableds: Disability, Representation, and Horror Film  Paul D. C. Bones Pet Profile: Mildred Sausage, Allan Hamsteak, & Inara Bacon  Paul D. C. Bones 30 A Bright Green: After Lou Ferrigno, A Deaf Bodybuilder Who Played the Incredible Hulk (1977–1982)  Raymond Luczak 31 Manifesto  The Committee for the Sick and Useless

About the Author :
Paul D. C. Bones, Ph.D. (2015), University of Oklahoma, is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Texas Woman’s University. He has published articles and book chapters on disability, hate crime, and criminology. This includes a recent article on access and accommodation during COVID-19 published in Socius (2021).

Jessica Smartt Gullion, Ph.D. (2002), Texas Woman's University, is the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of Sociology at that university. She has published extensively in medical sociology and qualitative research methodology, including the award-winning Diffractive Ethnography: Social Sciences and the Ontological Turn (Routledge, 2018).

Danielle Barber, M.S. (2018), Texas Woman's University, is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at that university. She conducts research on health and illness and on disability.

Review :
Praise for Redefining Disability:
Redefining Disability offers a unique and vivid combination of lucid explanations and evocative accounts. Featuring essay, narrative, poetry, and photography, this outstanding collection opens a creative window into the richness of disabled experience and calls out systemic ableism that radically diminishes the lives of disabled folks. This provocative, insightful book is essential reading for anyone committed to the work of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and access. - Laura L. Ellingson, PhD, Patrick A. Donohoe, S.J. Professor of Communication, Santa Clara University and author of Embodiment in Qualitative Research

Redefining Disability brilliantly takes readers on a tour through disabled people's lives. It skillfully talks frankly and directly to readers through a delightful array of short and pithy chapters covering expansive topics such as disability and pets, the COVID-19 pandemic, disclosure in higher ed, and being chronically ill. There are photographs and poems, short essays and longer ones. It’s at times emotionally raw and other times fun. To make this book extra-teachable, each chapter ends with discussion questions. A celebration of the act of telling disabled people’s stories, Redefining Disability is a must-read. - Laura Mauldin, PhD, NIC, Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut and author of Made to Hear: Cochlear Implants and Raising Deaf Children

Redefining Disability is a collection 100% shaped by disabled people, not just through the individual chapters and the perspectives contained in the book, but all the way through editing and indexing. The book takes aim at ableism and discrimination against disabled people through critique, with humour, with powerful imagery and art, with indelible writing, and does so from a diverse range of perspectives. But the book, its authors and editors, are also very intentional about accessibility, modeling the values it promotes with a clear and engaging introduction, through plain language and careful explanations and definitions, and with terrific discussion questions. The result is a book that could be taught in high school, College or University, but also is distinctly non-academic in its appeal. Redefining Disability captures and conveys disability culture and community more successfully, accessibly, and compellingly than any other book you could pick up. - Jay Dolmage, PhD, Professor of English, University of Waterloo and author of Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education and the founding editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.