Prof. McRuer Makes a “Top-10 Most Provocative” List–of Books, That Is
Just in time for Christmas or Hanukkah: Sex and Disability, a collection of essays co-edited by Prof. Robert McRuer and Anna Mollow, a PhD student at UC Berkeley, will be published by Duke University Press on December 22. And it’s already making Top 10 lists!
Here, DailyLoafing’s Shawn Alff calls it one of the “10 most provocative books out this December.”
According to the publisher,
The title of this collection of essays, Sex and Disability, unites two terms that the popular imagination often regards as incongruous. The major texts in sexuality studies, including queer theory, rarely mention disability, and foundational texts in disability studies do not discuss sex in much detail. What if “sex” and “disability” were understood as intimately related concepts? And what if disabled people were seen as both subjects and objects of a range of erotic desires and practices? These are among the questions that this collection’s contributors engage. From multiple perspectives—including literary analysis, ethnography, and autobiography—they consider how sex and disability come together and how disabled people negotiate sex and sexual identities in ableist and heteronormative culture. Queering disability studies, while also expanding the purview of queer and sexuality studies, these essays shake up notions about who and what is sexy and sexualizable, what counts as sex, and what desire is. At the same time, they challenge conceptions of disability in the dominant culture, queer studies, and disability studies.
Contributors include Prof. McRuer and GW University Writing Professor Abby L. Wilkerson.
