ABSTRACT
This is the first volume to feature interdisciplinary art history and disability studies scholarship, despite the commonalities these disciplines share in their investigations into culture and representation. Where disability studies and art history overlap most compellingly is in terms of visual experience. The appearance and performance of disability in visual culture has been analyzed by disability studies scholars such as Lennard J. Davis, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Tobin Siebers.1 These scholars’ theories have been revisited and reinvigorated in this volume in art historical terms-chapters in this book address the relationship between “the stare” and “the gaze”; the mainstream public’s reaction to and sometimes repulsion from visibly disabled individuals and representations of them; the social construction of disability, specifically in relation to visibility and visual culture; and the consequences of representation of and for individuals with visible versus invisible disabilities.
