First-Year Research Seminar: Representations of Disability in Contemporary Memoir

Catalog description

In this course, we will pursue analysis of contemporary memoir through the lens of disability representation, considering the ways the complexities of the body and mind are translated by authors onto the page, and how these experiences are received by readers. Through this practice, we will interrogate our own understandings of disability as well as societal assumptions of idealized and/or normative ways of being. Readings will include first hand accounts of chronic pain, cancer, paralysis, and mental illness, thus highlighting the many ways of moving through the world that may align with disabled identity and community. We will engage in an intersectional approach to analysis, considering the ways that race, gender, sexuality, and class inform the content, form, and construction of disability memoirs. Primary texts for our investigation will include Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Esmé Wang's The Collected Schizophrenias and Sonya Huber's Pain Woman Takes Your Keys. Readings will be supplemented with scholarship from the growing field of Disability Studies.