Special Issue of Studies in the Novel: Disability and Disease in the Novel
Due Date: 10-01-2024
This special issue seeks essays that explore the way the novel as a form intertwines, disaggregates, confounds, and represents the embodied experience of disability and disease. We invite essays that employ a range of theoretical perspectives and are particularly interested in approaches from the intersection of the form of the novel with queerness, disability, and care ethics, along with studies of embodiment, care ethics, disability studies, and queer and crip studies. This issue calls us to encounter each other where we least expect and most need to: at the limits of our ability to make meaning, to perform functions, even to live. It is here where we find each other; it is here where our commitment to what makes us human begins. We particularly hope to see contributions that address
- disability, disease, and the body in various genres of the novel such as eco-gothic, cli-fi, and horror;
- disease, pandemics, and ethics of care in historical, contemporary, or speculative narratives;
- the impacts of violence, conflict, and crisis on disability;
- the structural causes and consequences of notions of “disability” and diagnoses of “disease”;
- Indigenous and postcolonial literatures’ representations of health and illness;
- Diaspora, immigration/migration, and transnational narratives of dis/ability;
- narratives of the body about and by trans, intersex, and 2S people; and
- race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and national identity as they intersect with the experience of disease, disability, and embodiment.
The deadline for submissions is 1 October 2024. Please send queries or submissions to the editors, Lydia Cooper and Matthew Reznicek.