Disability Studies and Spanish Culture: Films, Novels, the Comic and the Public Exhibition
Benjamin Fraser
Abstract
This is the first book to use a Disability Studies approach to understanding cultural production in Spain. The author takes on a range of cultural products—from film to literature to the comic/sequential art and, in the brief epigraph, the public exhibition of paintings. Benjamin Fraser is just as familiar with the work of key disability studies theorists (Lennard J. Davis, Licia Carlson, Eva Feder Kittay, David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder) as he is with Spanish culture and the discourse of art. While researchers and students of cinema will be particularly interested in the book's detailed a ... More
This is the first book to use a Disability Studies approach to understanding cultural production in Spain. The author takes on a range of cultural products—from film to literature to the comic/sequential art and, in the brief epigraph, the public exhibition of paintings. Benjamin Fraser is just as familiar with the work of key disability studies theorists (Lennard J. Davis, Licia Carlson, Eva Feder Kittay, David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder) as he is with Spanish culture and the discourse of art. While researchers and students of cinema will be particularly interested in the book's detailed analyses of the formal aspects of the films, comics, and novels discussed, readers from backgrounds in history, political science and sociology will all be able to appreciate discussions of contemporary legislation, advocacy groups, cultural perceptions, models of social integration and more. Although physical disabilities are discussed infrequently in the book, its real focus is on intellectual disabilities. Chapters address Down syndrome, autism, childhood disability and alexia/agnosia. The cultural products analyzed in depth are the films Yo también (2009), León y Olvido (2004), María y yo (2010), ¿Qué tienes debajo del sombrero± (2006), and Más allá del espejo (2007); the novels Angelicomio (1981) and Quieto (2008), the comics María y yo (2007) and ‘Supergestor’ (2011) as well as the ‘Trazos Singulares’ exhibit in Madrid (2011).
Keywords:
Spain,
Disability Studies,
intellectual disabilities,
Down syndrome,
autism,
agnosia/alexia,
film,
literature,
the comic,
culture
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781846318702 |
| Published to Liverpool Scholarship Online: January 2014 |
DOI:10.5949/liverpool/9781846318702.001.0001 |
