Comment from the Field: Disability Studies in Science Fiction and Fantasy

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-496
Author(s):  
Amy S. Li
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Disability Studies

Biology and Manners

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Fan Studies ◽  
Contemporary American Literature ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
The Us ◽  
Main Series ◽  
Current Concerns ◽  
The Red Queen

This volume is a new collection of scholarly essays on the US science fiction and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold. The collection argues for the significant contributions Bujold’s works make to feminist and queer thought, disability studies, and fan studies. In addition, it suggests the importance of Bujold to contemporary American literature. The volume continues the establishment of Bujold as an important author of contemporary science fiction and fantasy. It argues that her corpus spans the distance between two full arcs of US feminism and has anticipated or responded to several of its current concerns in ways that invite or even require theoretical exploration. As well as papers on earlier work in the main series (the Vorkosigan Saga and the ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ novels The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls), the collection also presents work on recent publications such as The Sharing Knife sequence; the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ novellas; and the recent Vorkosigan Saga novel Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. The collection deepens feminist research in Bujold studies by incorporating queer and disability studies perspectives; and includes historiographic retracing of scholarship on Bujold’s work.

scholarly journals Bodies That Count: Augmentation, Community, and Disability in a Science Fiction Game

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Carr
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
Digital Game ◽  
Game Play ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
The Grotesque

The article examines the overlaps between disability studies and digital game studies through an analysis of the science fiction digital game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Using an adaptation of Mitchell and Snyder’s work on disability and narrative prosthesis in literature, the power implied by erasure-by-metaphor is considered, as are issues of migration, appropriation, and the grotesque. By examining ability, disability, and tangibility in relation to the game’s rules, game-play, and narrative elements, this analysis demonstrates the relevance of disability theory to science fiction games.

(Post)human Subjects, Disability Deployments

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-72
Author(s):  
Stuart Murray
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Future Technology ◽  
Inclusive Practice ◽  
The Future ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
Science Fiction Films

Chapter One concentrates on recent theoretical writings on disability and posthumanism and also explores the intellectual spaces in which the subjects take shape, before moveing to a discussion of how these come together in select science fiction films. Disability Studies and critical posthumanism have much in common; a critique of humanist norms; a recognition of complex embodiment; and a commitment to intersectionality and inclusive practice among them. But they also harbour suspicions of one another. The most important divergence between the two subject areas comes in arguments surrounding transhumanism. Transhumanist assertions that the application of future technology will allow for bodily and neurological enhancement, and the ‘improvement’ of humans as a result, are met with hostility by many with disabilities who see in them suggestions that disability is a condition that might, and indeed should, be eradicated in a science-led drive towards ‘perfection’. The chapter will explore these and other debates, especially as they form around cultural representations and the ways stories are told about the bodies and technologies of the future.

scholarly journals Imagining Accessibility: Theorizing Disability in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Holder
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Short Fiction ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Disabled People ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Medical Model Of Disability ◽  
Selection Of

With its emphasis on futurity, its close association with scientific plausibility, and its dedicated interrogation of contemporary ideologies, science fiction stands as a genre ripe with possibilities for disability studies. Many scholars have used the genre and its texts as platforms from which to either condemn or laud representations of disability within a field explicitly concerned with a society's future. My essay contributes to this discussion by foregrounding a science fiction text to theorize what a disabled future looks like. I take as my primary text a selection of short fiction from Uncanny Magazine, an online magazine that published a disability-themed issue Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction in 2018. The stories contained are penned exclusively by authors that identify as disabled; their visions of a disabled future, then, emerge from the contemporary experience of the disabled community. In addition to centering themselves in the discourse, these writers envision a disabled future as one that emphasizes community and frequently critiques and interrogates the costs, emotional and physical, inherent in the medical model of disability, announcing that a truly disabled future is one that features rather than erases the disabled mind and body. Running with the banner of destroying SF, these writers challenge the conventional, harmful tropes that SF has perpetuated and erects in its place an inclusive, intersectional, and disabled future.

Elimination of Crime: Science Fiction or Reality

1974 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-48
Author(s):  
ALICE M. PADAWER-SINGER
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Crime Science

Disability Studies Committee

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalie J. Ackerman ◽  
Monica Kurylo
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies
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