Routledge International Handbook of Critical Disability Studies

Disability impacts everyone in some way. Approximately 10-20% of the world’s population live with disability, and the associated issues affect not just these individuals but also their friends, family, and colleagues. When looking at it this way, it is strange that disability continues to be thought of as an anomaly—either as a medical problem located in a damaged body or something that exists exclusively outside the body, in a society that takes little account of non-normative bodies.

Critical disability studies both questions these existing notions of disability and interrogates how they have become a part of the academic attitude towards the field. As the first comprehensive handbook on critical disability studies, this volume provides an authoritative overview of the subject. Including 32 chapters written by established scholars and emerging, next-generation researchers it also includes contributions from activists, writers, and practitioners from the global north and the global south.

Divided into three parts: Representation, art, and culture; Media, technology, and communication; and Activism and the life course, it offers discussions on core critical disability studies topics including the social model, technology studies, trauma studies, representation, and queer theory, as well as ground-breaking work on emerging and cutting-edge areas such as neurodiversity and critical approaches in the Middle East, United States, Australia, and Europe.

It is required reading for all academics and students working in not just critical disability studies but sociology, digital accessibility and inclusion, health and social care, and social and public policy more broadly.

Katie Ellis is a Professor in Internet Studies and Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University.

Mike Kent is a Professor and Head of School for Media, Creative Arts and Social Enquiry at Curtin University, Australia.

Kim Cousins is a Research Assistant and Sessional Academic with the Centre for Culture and Technology and the School of Media, Creative Arts & Social Inquiry at Curtin University.