Back to Christian Perring's Home Page

 

Dowling College  Dr. Christian Perring

 

A List of Books and Films Relevant to Studying Disability

 

Memoirs of Disability

 

Berube, Michael.  Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child.  New York: Pantheon, 1996.

Cohen, Marion Deutsche.  Dirty Details: The Days and Nights of a Well Spouse.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Danquah, Meri Nana-Ama.  Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression.  Ballantine, 1999.

Fadiman, Anne.  The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and The Collision of Two Cultures.  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.

Finke, Beth.  Long Time No See.  Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Groce, Nora Ellen.  Everyone Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.

Kingsley, Jason and Mitchell Levitz.  Count Us In: Growing Up with Down Syndrome.  San Diego: Harvest, 1994.

Kunisto, Stephen.  Planet of the Blind: A Memoir.  New York: Dial Press, 1998.

Jamison, Kay Redfield.  An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness.  New York: Random House, 1997.

Mairs, Nancy.  Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the Nondisabled.  Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.

Murphy, R. F. (1987). The body silent: An anthropologist embarks on the most challenging journey of his life: Into the world of the disabled. London and New York: W.W. Norton

Saxton, Marsha and Florence Howe.  With Wings: An Anthology of Literature By and About Women with Disabilities.  New York: The Feminist Press, 1987.

Schiller, Lori, The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness New York: Warner Books, 1996

Sechehaye, Marguerite, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl. New York: New American Library, 1985.

Sheehan, Susan, Is There No Place on Earth for Me?  New York: Random House, 1983.

Sienkiewicz-Mercer, Ruth and Steven B. Kaplan.  I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes.  New York: Avon Books, 1989.

Styron, William.  Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. New York: Vintage, 1992.

Vonnegut, Mark, Eden Express New York: Bantam, 1976

Williams, Donna. (1992). Nobody, nowhere: The extraordinary autobiography of an autistic. New York: Avon Books.

Williams, Donna. (1994). Somebody, somewhere: Breaking free from the world of autism. New York: Times Books.

Zola, Irving Kenneth.  Missing Pieces: A Chronicle of Living with a Disability.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982. 

Zuckoff, Mitchell.  Choosing Naia: A Family's Journey.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2002. 

 

 

Scholarly Books

Adams, Rachel.Sideshow U.S.A: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination (University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Barnes, Colin, Geof Mercer, and Tom Shakespeare.  Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction.  Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999.

Baynton, Douglas, Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language, 1847-1920

Branson, Jan and Don Miller, Damned for Their Difference: The Cultural Construction of Deaf People As Disabled (Gallaudet University Press, 2002).

Buchanan, Robert. Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory,1850-1950 (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999).

Carlson, Elof Axel.  The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea.  Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001.

Charlton, James. Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment (University of California Press, 1998)

Corrigan, Patrick, W. (Editor).  On the Stigma of Mental Illness: Practical Strategies for Research and Social Change. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005.

Corker, Mairian and Tom Shakespeare.  Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory.  London: Continuum, 2002.

Davis, Leonard. Enforcing Normalcy : Disability, Deafness and the Body (Verso 1995).

Davis, Lennard J.  Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism & Other Difficult Positions.  New York: NYU Press, 2002.

Dowbiggin, Ian Robert.  Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada 1880-1940.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.

David M. Engel, Frank W. Munger.  Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities (Chicago Series in Law and Society) University Of Chicago Press, 2003.

Feder Kittay, Eva.  Love's Labor: Essays on Women, Equality, and Dependency.  New York: Routledge, 1999.

Feder Kittay, Eva & Ellen K. Feder (Editors).  The Subject of Care: Feminist Perspectives on Dependency.  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.

Fiedler, Leslie. Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (1978).

Fleischer, Doris Zames and Frieda Zames.  The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.

Francis, Leslie Pickering & Anita Silvers (Editors).  Americans with Disabilities: Exploring Implications of the Law for Individuals and Institutions.  New York: Routledge, 2000.

Friedlander, Henry, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)

Goffman, E.  (1963).  Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Hingsburger, Dave.  First Contact: Charting Inner Space.  Diverse City Press, 2000.

Jodelet, Denise.  Madness and Social Representations: Living with the Mad in One French Community.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Koestler, Frances. The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in America, 1976.

Kuhl,Stefan, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism(Oxford University Press, 1994).

Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood.  Multilingual Matters Limited, 2003.

Lane, Harlan The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community Independent Publishers Group; (March 2000)

Larrabee, Mary Jeanne (Editor).  An Ethic of Care: Feminist and Interdisciplinary Perspectives.  New York: Routledge, 1993.

Levine, Carol (Editor).  Always on Call: When Illness Turns Families into Caregivers.  New York: United Hospital Fund, 2000. 

Linneman, D. R. (2001). Idiots: Stories about mindedness and mental retardation. New York: Peter Lang.

Longmore, Paul, Lauri Umansky, eds. The New Disability History: American Perspectives (History of Disability). (New York University Press, 2000).

Longmore, Paul, Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (American Subjects) (Temple, 2003).

Louhiala, Pekka.  Preventing Intellectual Disability: Ethical and Clinical Issues.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Lowenfeld, Berthold. The Changing Status of the Blind: From Separation to Integration, 1975.

MacIntyre, Alasdair.  Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues.  Chicago: Open Court, 1999.

Matson, Floyd. Walking Alone and Marching Together: A History of the Organized Blind Movement in the United States, 1940-1990 (Nat'l Federation of the Blind, 1990).

Martha Minow, Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law.  Cornell University Press, 1991.

Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder, eds., The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability in the Humanities (The Body, in Theory - Histories of Cultural Materialism)(University of Michigan Press, 1997).  .

O'Brien, Ruth, Crippled Justice: Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace. (University of Chicago Press, 2001).

Oliver, Michael. Politics of Disablement St. Martin's Press; (March 1997)

Oliver, M. (1996). Understanding disability: From theory to practice.   New York: Palgrave.

Padden, Carol and Tom Humphries, Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (Harvard University Press, 1988).

Parks, Jennifer A. No Place Like Home?  Feminist Ethics and Home Health Care.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. 

Parens, Erik and Adrienne Asch (Editors).  Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights.  Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000.

Pernick, Micheal The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915(Oxford University Press, 1996)

Potok, Andrew.  A Matter of Dignity: Changing the World of the Disabled.  New York: Bantam Books, 2002.

Rapley, Mark.  The Social Construction of Intellectual Disability.  New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Reilly, Phillip & Gerald N. Grob The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States Johns Hopkins Univ Pr; (May 1991)

Reinders, Hans. (2000). The future of the disabled in liberal society: An ethical analysis. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Shakespeare, Tom. (Ed.). (1998). The disability reader: Social science perspectives. London and New York: Cassell.

Shakespeare, T., Gillespie-Sells, K., & Davies, D. (1996). The sexual politics of disability: Untold desires. London: Cassell Publications.

Joseph Shapiro, No Pity : People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, Three Rivers Press; (October 25, 1994)

Silvers, Anita, David Wasserman, and Mary B. Mahowald.  Disability, Difference, Discrimination: Perspectives on Justice in Bioethics and Public Policy.  New York: Routledge, 1998.

Snyder, S. L., Brueggemann, B. J., & Garland-Thomson, R. (Eds.). (2002). Disability Studies: Enabling the humanities. New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Stiker, H. (1999). A history of disability (W. Sayers, Trans.) [Corporealities: Discourses of Disability]. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. (Original work published 1987).

John Swain, Sally French, Colin Cameron.  Controversial Issues In A Disabling Society.  Open University Press, 2003.

Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer.  Disabled Rights: American Disability Policy and the Fight for Equality.  Georgetown University Press, 2003.

Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Extraordinary Bodies (Columbia University Press, 1997).

Thomson, Rosemarie Garland.  Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (New York University Press, 1996).

Trent, James W. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Van Cleve, John and Barry Crouch, A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America (Gallaudet University Press, 1989).

Wahl, Otto F.  Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness.  New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Wendell, Susan.  The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability.  New York: Routledge, 1996.

Willmuth, M., & Holcomb, L. (1994). Women with disabilities: Found voices. Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Press, Inc.

 

Films and Documentaries

Twitch and Shout http://www.blinddogfilms.com/twitchandshout/

Gaby (1987)

When Billy Broke His Head http://www.fanlight.com/catalog/films/136_wbbhh.shtml

Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back http://www.fanlight.com/catalog/films/230_vs.shtml

The Miracle Worker (1962)

What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Home of the Brave (1949)

A Little History Worth Knowing

Abandoned to their Fate (1997). http://www.pdassoc.com/attf.html

Bong and Donnell

Breathing Lessons (1996). http://www.pacificnews.org/marko/breathing-lessons.html

The Collector of Bedford Street

Disability Identity and Culture http://www.selfadvocacy.org/Module%20Five.htm

Educating Peter (1992).

Graduating Peter (2003). http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/graduating_peter/

Elling

Going to School-Ir a la Escuela (2001). http://richardcohenfilms.com/GoingtoSchool.htm

How’s Your News?

Hurry Tomorrow (1975). http://richardcohenfilms.com/hurry_tomorrow.html

If I Can’t Do It

In the Land of the Deaf (1993). http://www.alliancefrancaise.com.hk/events/fcp25/24.html

King Gimp (2000). http://www.kinggimp.com/flash.html

Lifestyles of the Poor and Unknown

Living with Grace

Losing It

My Country

My Flesh and Blood (2003). http://chaikenfilms.com/Frameset(films).html

No Apologies (1994).  http://www.lustydevil.com/fatgirl/wrycrips.html

Off Track

On the Road with Temple

Out of Sight

Patterns

People in Motion: Changing Ideas about People with Disabilities

Positive Images

Profoundly Normal

Rachael in Middle School

Rachael, Being Five

Refrigerator Moms

Regular Lives http://teacher.shop.pbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1407524

Selling Murder: The Killing Films of The Third Reich (1991). http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/handicapped/right.htm#film

Sound and Fury (2001). http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/

Stairway to Heaven

Tru Confessions

Us and Them

Waiting for Ronald

Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace

Titicut Follies (1967). http://www.subcin.com/titicut.html

 

 

(This list has been inspired by many other sources: please contact Christian Perring with questions or concerns)