The course will focus on historical and contemporary
portrayals of disability and disabled people in literature.
Our course will explore how texts portray people with
disabilities of all kinds – physical, emotional, social, and mental. We will read short stories, poems,
memoirs, essays, and plays. The
majority of texts will be roughly contemporary, but some will also help us to
historicize images of disability in literature. We will also watch films, both documentary and otherwise.
WeÕll read texts written by disabled and non-disabled writers. We will explore the ways that many
stereotypical portrayals of the disabled undermine, invalidate, and infantilize
the disabled community, and seek out literary voices that empower the disabled
and question our definition of Ònormal.Ó
Studying disability in literature helps us to explore what our culture
decides is Ònormal,Ó and asks us to consider what makes us human. Literature both reflects and creates
cultural messages about ability and disability, ÒnormalÓ and Òabnormal.Ó Literature can help us understand the
experience of the disabled, as well as understand our own responses to
disability in our own lives and in our culture.
þ To
become familiar with the history of the portrayal of disability in literature.
þ To
make connections between literary portrayals and real-life situations.
þ To
gain understanding of the varied experiences of the disabled community.
þ To
develop skills of close and careful reading.
þ To
enhance discussion skills through a focus on participating in classroom
discussion and leading classroom discussion.
þ To
improve presentation skills with an end-of semester paper presentation.
þ To
develop writing skills through multiple drafts and peer response on papers.
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Attendance and good classroom citizenship is required.
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Students will periodically (roughly four times over the
semester) be required to prepare a one page informal response to the reading on
the day it is due. Informal
responses might include:
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Informal reviews of the readings
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Questions about the texts
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A conversation with the author of the text
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A story or poem in response to the piece
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An imitation of the style or tone of the piece
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A letter to the author of the text
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Two short (4 page) papers will be due approximately 1/3
and 2/3 of the way through the course.
These essays should focus on a theme, a trend, a concern, a criticism,
or an analysis of one (or possibly more) of the texts.
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Students in groups of 3 or 4 will lead class discussion
on one of the texts for one class session. Student-led discussions (including a brief presentation and
comments from group members) will help keep the class interesting and focused.
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For the final project, each student will read one
disability-focused text not included on the syllabus. Students may select from the list (included at the end of
this proposal) or seek out another text, with approval. Using the chosen text, each student
will:
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Create a presentation for the last week of class about
the chosen text.
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Write a Final Paper (8 pages) on the selected text,
focusing on an analysis of the text, including how it fits into the larger
context of disability in literature.
The final grade will include the following elements:
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Paper 1:
15%
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Paper 2: 20%
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Group Discussion-leading: 10%
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Final Project Paper: 25%
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Final Project Presentation: 10%
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Informal Writings: 5%
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Classroom Citizenship: 15%
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Nancy Mairs: ÒOn Being a CrippleÓ
Mairs writes this essay from her own experience of being a
ÒcrippleÓ (her chosen term) as a result of multiple sclerosis.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne: ÒThe Birth MarkÓ
HawthorneÕs story depicts a foolish doctorÕs attempt to remove
what he sees as a physical imperfection (a birthmark) from the otherwise
perfectly beautiful face of his beloved wife.
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Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time
HaddonÕs novel uses a first-person narrator, 15-year old
Christopher, who is autistic. The
novel has won the Whitbread Prize and the Commonwealth WriterÕs Prize.
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Excerpts from Temple Grandin: Thinking in Pictures: ÒSensory Problems in Autism: The Squeeze MachineÓ
(62 – 81), ÒEmotion and Autism: Learning EmpathyÓ (82 – 95), and
ÒAutism and Relationships: Dating DataÓ 131 – 141.
Grandin is a Òhigh-functioningÓ autistic who has written
extensively on her own experiences of autism and on animal rights.
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Flannery O'Connor: ÒGood Country PeopleÓ
OÕConnor suffered from lupus; this is one of her many stories
portraying disability. In it, the
character Hulga has a prosthetic leg and wears glasses; a traveling salesman
make off with both her physical aids.
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Raymond Carver: ÒCathedralÓ
This storyÕs plot revolves around interactions between a blind
man and a sighted man.
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David Freeman: Creeps from Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by
Disabled Playwrights
This play, written in part from FreemanÕs personal experience,
portrays the lives of young men living with cerebral palsy as they do menial
work through a state-sponsored charity organization.
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Mike Ervin: The History of Bowling from Beyond Victims and Villains:
Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights
Two college students – a young man in a wheelchair with
very limited mobility and a young woman with epilepsy – must work
together on a term paper about a sport to get credit for their gym class.
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John Belluso: Gretty Good Time from Beyond Victims and Villains:
Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights
A young woman disabled by polio is institutionalized and wants
to refuse further treatment. She
imagines conversations and escapes with another disabled woman: a girl severely
disfigured by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Disorienting and imaginative, the play explores patientsÕ
autonomy and right to die, as well as the financial and moral issues of
caretakers.
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Lynn Manning: Shoot! from Beyond Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by
Disabled Playwrights
The funny and disturbing nugget of this play is the fact that a
blind man purchases a gun. The
blind man, an African-American, struggles with cultural assumptions about
manliness and blackness in inner-city Los Angeles.
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Susan Nussbaum:
No One as Nasty from Beyond
Victims and Villains: Contemporary Plays by Disabled Playwrights
A white woman in a wheelchair has numerous physical assistants
who work for her; she develops a long-term relationship with one, an African-American
woman. The play wrestles with
problematic relationships in race and class, in addition to portraying her
struggle to live a ÒnormalÓ life.
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Lucy Grealy: Autobiography of a Face
GrealyÕs face was severely disfigured as a result of treatment
to save her from cancer at age nine.
Her memoir describes her struggle to live in a culture obsessed with
physical beauty.
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman: ÒThe Yellow WallpaperÓ
GilmanÕs classic story portrays depression and madness; the
tale is credited with bringing attention to (and at least partly changing) the
methods of psychiatric treatment for women of her time.
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David B.: Epileptic (a graphic novel)
David B.Õs brother had epilepsy. In this graphic novel/memoir, David B. portrays the struggle
of his entire family to find treatment and appropriate accommodations for his
brotherÕs increasingly painful and uncontrollable seizures.
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Jean-Dominique Bauby: The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly
At age 44, Bauby experienced a catastrophic stroke that left
him completely unable to move. A
former editor for Elle magazine, Bauby
dictated this book by moving his left eyelid to point to letters on a printed
alphabet.
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Sylvia Plath's ÒTulipsÓ and ÒLady LazarusÓ
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Ginsberg's ÒKaddishÓ
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Gwendolyn Brooks: Òsick man looks at flowersÓ
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Freaks (1932)
Tod BrowningÕs disturbing film included a cast of physically
disabled men and women working as carnival freaks. The drama portrays the conflict between the ÒfreaksÓ and the
Ònormals,Ó including violence and sexuality surprising for a film of the time.
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Murderball
(2005)
This is a documentary about quadriplegics playing full-contact
rugby in specially designed wheelchairs.
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Students will do in-class presentations on their
selected text related to disability issues. The presentation will be one part of an extended paper on
the chosen text, which will serve as the final exam.
Potential Texts for final papers and presentations:
The Literature, Arts, Medicine Database (located at
http://litmed.med.nyu.edu ) provides excellent annotations on texts that would
be useful for the course. It can
be searched by specific subject key words (e.g., Òautism,Ó Òdepression,Ó
Òfamily relationships,Ó Òdrug addictionÓ etc.) to find a text that deals with a
specific issue of interest.
Novels:
Carson McCullers: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Tsitsi Dangarembga: Nervous Conditions
Tim O'Brien: The Things They Carried
John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
Sylvia Plath: The Bell Jar
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Barbara Kingsolver: The Poisonwood Bible
Katherine Dunn: Freaks
William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury
Ken Kesey: One Flew Over the CuckooÕs Nest
Non-Fiction
Stephen Kuusisto: Planet of the Blind
Lauren Slater: Prozac Diary
Temple Grandin: Thinking in Pictures
Andre Dubus: Meditations from a Movable Chair
William Styron: Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
Alice Sebold: Lucky
Daniel Tammet: Born on a Blue Day: Inside the
Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant
Drama
Mark Medoff: Children of a Lesser God
William Shakespeare: Richard III
Susan Sontag: Alice in Bed
Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie
Susan Nussbaum: Parade
Pomerance: The Elephant Man
William Gibson: The Miracle Worker
Charles L. Mee, Jr.: A Summer Evening in Des Moines
Doris Baizley and Victoria Ann Lewis: P. H. *reaks: The
Hidden History of People with Disabilities