13/10/2026
Cultural Disability Studies in Education: Interdisciplinary Navigations of the Normative Divide, Second Edition.
David Bolt, Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, Liverpool Hope University.
Over the past half century, disability studies has not only emerged as a discipline in itself but also as a catalyst for cultural disability studies and Disability Studies in Education. In this book the three areas become united as Cultural Disability Studies in Education, recognising education as a discourse between tutors and students who explore representations of disability on the levels of everything from academic disciplines and knowledge to language and theory; from received understandings and social attitudes to narrative and characterisation.
With front-cover artwork by Fran Zerva, enhanced and updated throughout, moving from mid-nineteenth to early twenty-first-century representations, this new edition combines disability studies with a selection of 10 indicative disciplines. In so doing, it encourages discussion around representations of disability in drama, novels, films, autobiography, short stories, music videos, sitcoms, advertising campaigns, and radio interviews. Discussions are approached via the tripartite model of disability, a critical framework that disrupts one-dimensional representations and enables complex analyses along the lines of normative positivity, non-normative negativity, and non-normative positivity.
Informed by experiential knowledge of disability, contemporary tutors and students are engaged in an expansive conversation that uncovers problematic notions related to the normative divide. More than being critical of this division, the book’s contention is that it should be navigated from beyond; that disability is about knowledge more than needs; and that education can be enriched by a non-normative combination of social aesthetics and identity pedagogics.
The 10 chapters combine disability studies with literary studies, aesthetics, film studies, Holocaust studies, gender studies, happiness studies, popular music studies, humour studies, media studies, and radio studies. Overall, with practical reflections, seminar suggestions, indicative questions, and recommendations for further reading, Cultural Disability Studies in Education will be of interest to interdisciplinary tutors and students engaged with disability across the humanities, the social sciences, and education.
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Cultural Disability Studies in Education unites cultural disability studies and disability studies in education in recognising education as a discourse between educators and students who examine how disability is represented from academic disciplines and curricular to language, theory, narrative, an...
