It’s back-to-school season. For these of us who work in schooling, which means desirous about readings, syllabi, course design, and all that thrilling stuff. For others, it means much less outdoorsy trip time and extra indoor actions. Irrespective of which group you fall into, we thought some studying recs could be good.
This yr we’re introducing a studying record on artwork, aesthetics, and incapacity.
All the objects beneath are linked. Nonetheless, among the articles and e book chapters are paywalled. However these of you who’ve college subscriptions or are in any other case resourceful ought to be capable of entry a great deal of the items.
This record has additionally been organized in order that it’s simpler to leap into. As in, it’s not simply a protracted record of readings. It’s a protracted record that has some sections and notes, too! Inside every part, authors are listed in alphabetical order by final title. It additionally has a bonus part of artwork by disabled artists that you would be able to have interaction with alongside the readings.
And for earlier lists of this type, see our Gender-Balanced Syllabus Guide and BIPOC Reading List.
As at all times, additions and feedback are welcome.
Introductory Readings
These readings are appropriate for a starting viewers. They don’t depend on a lot by means of background, and plenty of are first-personal accounts.
- Robert Bogdan, Picturing Disability
A group of essays and historic images of individuals with disabilities. Clear historic strategy, together with chapters on circus and spectacle images, medical images, promoting, and artwork images. Reads like a pleasant museum present catalog. - Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, About Us
A group of essays by all kinds of disabled authors about their experiences, lots of which have aesthetic and inventive import. - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring
A complete examination of staring – why we stare, when, and at what. Incapacity in addition to different case research mentioned. Subjects embrace: the expertise of staring and being stared at, staring again, etiquette and norms governing staring, and totally different components of the physique we are inclined to stare at. - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography”
Just like however much less complete than her e book Staring. However it’s essay-length. - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Disability and Representation”
A really quick essay about incapacity illustration (each within the figurative sense and within the inventive sense). Its significance, the way it has modified, and the way it might proceed to enhance. - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Picturing People with Disabilities: Classical Portraiture as Reconstructive Narrative”
A detailed evaluation of portraiture, and the way it can use its standing as a standard tremendous artwork kind to render disabled topics with respect and humanity. - Sara Goering, “Disability, Internalized Oppression, and Appearance Norms”
A brief essay about why and when folks select to “repair” their look, connecting sexist and ableist look expectations. - Harriet McBryde Johnson, “The Art Object” from Too Late to Die Younger
A recounting of the writer’s expertise having her portrait taken for the New York Occasions Journal cowl. - Georgina Kleege, Sight Unseen
A e book of essays in regards to the writer’s personal blindness. Kleege, additionally a incapacity scholar, contains chapters about representations of the blind in literature and in portray, the phenomenology of blindness, and her expertise of studying. - Petra Kuppers, Studying Disability Arts and Culture
Very a lot a textbook. Helpful to make use of, or no less than for concepts for these instructing incapacity aesthetics. Accommodates a wealth of examples and attainable workout routines. - Carolyn Lazard, “Accessibility in the Arts: A Promise and a Practice”
“An accessibility information geared towards small-scale arts nonprofits and the possibly expansive publics these organizations serve. It particulars particular methods during which disabled individuals are excluded from cultural areas and presents attainable options to these limitations.” Out there as each PDF and audio. - Riva Lehrer, Golem Girl
A memoir. Lehrer, born with spina bifida, talks in regards to the relationship between her incapacity, inventive creativity, and sexuality. - Microsoft, ft. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Inclusive Design Subject Matter Expert Series featuring Rosemarie with audio description”
A six-minute video the place Garland-Thomson discusses accessibility and inclusive design. - Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics
A contemporary locus classicus about incapacity in fashionable artwork and tradition. Argues that fashionable artwork has been profitable by embracing incapacity as stunning. Chapters cowl: aesthetics and what it means to be “human”, the battle between fashionable artwork and Nazism, the tradition wars and up to date trauma artwork. - Anita Silvers, “From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Something Beautiful Should Be Made!”
A brief essay in regards to the “connection between drugs and wonder”, exploring methods during which medical professionals can promote seeing magnificence in incapacity, and thereby advance inclusive justice. To not be confused with Silvers’ different, similarly-titled essay. - Anita Silvers, “From the Crooked Timber of Humanity, Beautiful Things Can Be Made”
An examination of how portraiture may be, however isn’t typically, used to worth anomalous (e.g., disabled) topics. Key instance is cubist portraiture. - Marta Tafalla, “Anosmic Aesthetics”
A dialogue of anosmia (the lack to understand odors) and its impact on aesthetic appreciation, arguing that there’s some loss, however defending the compensating position of creativeness. - Marta Tafalla, “Smell and Anosmia in the Aesthetic: Appreciation of Gardens”
An argument that scent is essential to appreciation of gardens. Engages with Kant and formalism.
Intermediate Readings
These readings are appropriate for a extra superior viewers. Somebody with no less than a little bit of background in philosophy, incapacity, artwork, and the humanities gained’t have a lot bother. When it comes to syllabus development, these readings are higher for higher division programs.
- Aili Bresnahan and Michael Deckard, “Beauty in Disability: An Aesthetics for Dance and for Life”
An examination of dance, particularly ballet, and the right way to exchange classical beliefs of magnificence with a brand new mannequin extra appropriate for inclusive magnificence requirements for motion and dance. Engages with Burke. - Lennard J. Davis, The Disability Studies Reader
A reader that features a number of essays of curiosity to these in artwork and aesthetics, together with chapters on illustration, public statuary, images, design, poetry, and beliefs of magnificence. Problem of chapters varies, however most will fall within the intermediate vary. - Blake Howe, Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Neil Lerner, and Joseph Straus, The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies
A group with many pertinent essays, overlaying subjects like d/Deafness, castrato, vocal injury, and assistive expertise. - Blake Howe and Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, “Colloquy: On the Disability Aesthetics of Music”
A group of 5 quick essays on a variety of subjects on the intersection of music and incapacity. A few of these are a bit extra superior. - Georgina Kleege, “Blind Self-Portraits: Remaking the Image of Blindness”
A one-hour speak posted to YouTube, given by a blind disabilities scholar. Discusses portraits and self-portraits, each historic and up to date, and the way representations of blindness have modified. - Petra Kuppers, Disability and Contemporary Performance
A monograph overlaying an unlimited vary of performances of incapacity, inside and out of doors of the artwork world. Subjects embrace freak reveals, medical working theaters, visible artwork, digital expertise and the web. The primary half or so is on the intermediate degree; the rest shall be helped by background in phenomenology and poststructuralist concept.
Superior Readings
Insiders and professionals might wish to examine these out, too.
- Benjamin Fraser, “Signification and Staring: Icon, Index, and Symbol in Visual Media” from Cognitive Incapacity Aesthetics
An essay on the illustration of cognitive disabilities in movie. Some superior movie concept terminology. - Invoice Hughes, “The Constitution of Impairment: Modernity and the Aesthetic of Oppression”
A paper in regards to the fashionable non-disabled gaze and the oppression that it constructs. (See additionally Hughes’ different work for extra common background on incapacity research.) - Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation
A monograph that appears at “aesthetic nervousness”: the “unease and ethical panic” precipitated by the encounter and inclusion of the disabled in literature. Covers a variety of examples, together with Greek and Yoruba literature, Beckett, Soyinka, and Coetzee. Appropriate for these accustomed to some postcolonial concept. - Keri Watson and Timothy W. Hiles, The Routledge Companion to Art and Disability
A group of 23 essays, all of that are related to the current record. Many (however not all) are a bit more difficult. Chapters embrace: a number of totally different historic analyses from throughout the globe, analyses of how artwork contributes to ableism and present norms – and the way it can counter these requirements. Many essays have interaction with a selected piece of artwork historical past, whether or not specific artists, artworks, or localized actions.
Artists
Here’s a record of disabled artists whose work you may have a look at and take into consideration (or train alongside) these readings.
- Ludwig van Beethoven, music
- John Lee Clark, poetry
- Chuck Shut, portray
- Clare Cunningham, dance
- Jess Curtis, dance
- Sean Forbes, music
- Jerron Herman, dance
- Frida Kahlo, portray
- Christine Solar Kim, drawing, video, efficiency
- Carolyn Lazard, efficiency, images, movie, sculpture
- Riva Lehrer, portray
- Aaron McPeake, sculpture
- Claude Monet, portray
- Frank Moore, efficiency, writing
- Carmen Papalia, efficiency
- Invoice Shannon, dance
- Alice Sheppard, dance
- Katherine Sherwood, portray, combined media
- Sins Invalid, a efficiency challenge led by Patricia Berne and Leroy F. Moore Jr.
- Kurt Weston, images
- Paul Wittgenstein, music
- Stevie Marvel, music
