Cognitive Disability Aesthetics: Visual Culture, Disability Representations, and the (In)Visibility of Cognitive Difference

Description

Cognitive Disability Aesthetics explores the invisibility of cognitive disability in theoretical, historical, social, and cultural contexts. Benjamin Fraser's cutting edge research and analysis signals a second-wave in disability studies that prioritizes cognition. Fraser expands upon previous research into physical disability representations and focuses on those disabilities that tend to be least visible in society (autism, Down syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia). Moving beyond established literary approaches analyzing prose representations of disability, the book explores how iconic and indexical modes of signification operate in visual texts. Taking on cognitive disability representations in a range of visual media (painting, cinema, and graphic novels), Fraser showcases the value of returning to impairment discourse. Cognitive Disability Aesthetics successfully reconfigures disability studies in the humanities and exposes the chasm that exists between Anglophone disability studies and disability studies in the Hispanic world. Benjamin Fraser is a professor of Hispanic Studies and chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at East Carolina University. Introduction Part I: Theorizing Visual Disability Representations Chapter 1 The (In)Visibility of Cognitive Disability Chapter 2 Signification and Staring: Icon, Index, and Symbol in Visual Media Chapter 3 Disability Scholarship at the Seam: The Materiality of Visual Narrative Part II: Cognition, Collaboration, Community Chapter 4 Visualizing Down Syndrome and Autism: The Trazos Singulares [Singular Strokes] (2011) Exhibition and Maria cumple 20 anos [Maria Turns Twenty] (2015) Chapter 5 Sequencing Alzheimer's Dementia: Paco Roca's Graphic Novel Arrugas [Wrinkles] (2008) Chapter 6 Screening Schizophrenia: Documentary Cinema, Cognitive Disability and Abel Garcia Roure's Una cierta verdad [A Certain Truth] (2008) Conclusion Notes References Index