Disability Studies in the Hispanic World: Proposals and Methodologies
2013; Volume: 17; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/hcs.2013.0015
ISSN1934-9009
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Modern Theater Studies
ResumoDisability Studies in the Hispanic World:Proposals and Methodologies Encarnación Juárez-Almendros (bio) Servía en la venta, asimesmo, una moza asturiana, ancha de cara, llana de cogote, de nariz roma, del un ojo tuerta y del otro no muy sana. Verdad es que la gallardía del cuerpo suplía las demás faltas: no tenía siete palmos de los pies a la cabeza, y las espaldas, que algún tanto le cargaban, la hacían mirar al suelo más de lo que ella quisiera. (Don Quijote I, 16) The growth of Disability Studies theories and their application in the humanities have been very fruitful over the last two decades.1 The sheer quantity of works published supports Tobin Sieber’s assertion that the field can no longer be called “emergent.”2 The high level of interest in the field was corroborated in the recent 2013 MLA Convention where activities dedicated to exploring disability surpassed those of any other year. That convention program included twenty-one panels, four related sessions, five individual papers and a forum dedicated to disability studies.3 And yet, even a cursory review of these abundant publications and conference papers reveals the scarcity of equivalent works in the Hispanic humanities. That is, developments in Disability theories and analyses seem to have been mostly associated with studies of culture and literature within the discipline of English. In fact, when I became involved in the intellectual movement as a participating scholar and as member of both the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession and of the MLA Executive Division of Disability Studies, I found myself spatially immersed in [End Page 153] the English area of the convention—the area where most of the disability panels took place. Nevertheless, current publications and ongoing projects testify to a developing interest in disability criticism—and in the historical investigation of disability—in the fields of modern and contemporary Hispanic Studies. Examples include Susan Antebi’s Carnal Inscriptions (2009), Benjamin Fraser’s edition of Deaf History and Culture in Spain (2009) and his book Disability Studies and Spanish Culture: Films, Novels, the Comic, and the Public Exhibition (2013) and Matthew J. Marr’s The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film (2012). In addition, Suzanne Bost’s Encarnación: Illness and Body Politic in Chicana Feminist Literature (2010), and Julie Avril Minich’s manuscript in progress—Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico—testify to a productive effort in the field of Latino literature. The two sessions organized by Fraser at the M/MLA 2011 meeting in Saint Louis; the recent meeting in Mexico City (January 14-18, 2013), De cómo la “discapacidad” entrecomilla a la “normalidad,” XIV Coloquio de 17, Instituto de Estudios críticos (co-organized with Centro Cultural de España en México), which included three papers on disability in the arts; the projected collection Libre acceso: Critical Disability Studies in Latin American Literature, edited by Susan Antebi and Beth E. Jörgensen; and the present special section on “Disability Studies in the Hispanic World” in this journal—all of these reveal the growth of scholarly activities devoted to Hispanic disability unfolding in North America. In contrast to these happenings, the production of disability studies scholarship in medieval and Renaissance Spanish literature has a long way to go, indeed.4 The six articles included in “Disability Studies in the Hispanic World” illustrate a variety of Hispanic literary and artistic productions as analyzed by a group of scholars working in the USA. The unifying factor of this special section is the emphasis on applying disability methodologies to a great diversity of texts and genres from different geographical areas, nations, and periods. In effect, the works in this section of the AJHCS range from an examination of a Spanish sixteenth-century first-person testimony—Teresa de Avila’s Book of Her Life—to a contemporary publication in Latino literature in the USA—Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier, from the Mexican colonial representation of deformed people in the House of Moztezuma found in Cartas de relación by Hernán Cortés to the early...
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