ABSTRACT
Disability studies in the humanities is now an established field. Victorian disability studies has reached significant milestones as well, including scholarly collections, key monographs, special issues of journals, and dedicated conferences. Victorian disability studies intersects significantly with work in medical/health humanities as well as gender studies, queer studies, genre/narrative studies, and cultural studies. From an emphasis on representations and disabling discourses and environments, recent work shifts toward an investigation of disability as a maker of Victorian and later culture. Disability shaped Victorian genres, aesthetics, prosthetics, and technologies, as well as “queering” Victorian institutions like the family, marriage, and work. Victorian engagements with illness and disability inform current conversations about fundamental questions of independence, dependency, and care. Challenges for the field include Victorian disability studies’ emphasis on physical and sensory conditions as opposed to the “bodymind,” its limited engagement with intellectual disabilities, and its complicated relationship to scholarship in medical/health humanities.
