Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies – Call for Papers
Special Issue: Autism Narratives
Guest Editors: Stuart Murray (English, University of Leeds) & Mark Osteen (English, Loyola University Maryland)
2018 will mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of two major studies on the cultural representations of autism, Stuart Murray’s monographRepresenting Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination and Mark Osteen’s edited collection Autism and Representation. In the intervening years, autism representation has proliferated across media and been re-configured diagnostically in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-V. This special issue asks: what current topics shape the cultural conversations around autism? Has the greater profile of the condition over the last ten years led to improvements in the ways it is discussed and greater sophistication in its representations? Have increases in cross-and multi-disciplinary academic work produced more nuanced accounts of autism experiences? Where does the condition fit in recent developments in Disability Studies? In short, do we now know better what is meant by an ‘autism narrative’?
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
- Autism in fiction, film, and life-narratives
- Autism and the visual arts
- Music and autism
- DSM-V and changes in autism diagnosis; the ‘disappearance’ of Asperger’s syndrome
- Autism and popular media
- Theorising autism
- Medical discourses of autism
- Autism and social communities
- Autism and technology
- Autism and inter/dependence and care
- Autism and cultural, ethnic and racial diversity
Please email a one-page proposal to s.f.murray@leeds.ac.uk and mosteen@loyola.edu by 28th February 2017. Contributors can expect to be selected and notified by 31st March 2017. (Full drafts of the selected articles will be due on December 15, 2017). Please direct any questions to either guest editor. We welcome contributions from autistic/neuro-atypical persons.