The 40th issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (JLCDS) has now been published by Liverpool University Press, with the international support of Project MUSE and Scopus.
This is a double celebration for Hope because the journal’s institutional base, the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (CCDS), has just marked its 10th anniversary.
Across the decade, the CCDS seminar themes have included Changing Social Attitudes to Disability; The Voice of Disability; Disability Futurity; and Disability and the Emotions. It is on the last of these themes that the new JLCDS special issue focuses.
The Disability and the Emotions seminar series was relatively lengthy, as outlined by Hope’s outstanding Disability Studies MA graduates Holly Lightburn and Amy Redhead in the comments section of the new issue, as well as the related films on the CCDS YouTube channel.
The new JLCDS special issue is based on a sample of six seminars from the series. Dr Emma Sheppard (City, University of London) presented a critical crip reading of pain as an emotional lived experience. Prof Chris Foss (University of Mary Washington) argued that Oscar Wilde’s “The Birthday of the Infanta” contains complex considerations of pity in Victorian sentimentalism. Dr Ryan Parrey (Eastern Washington University) explored feelings of discomfort produced by disability studies for generative potential in academia and beyond. Ms Gesine Wegner (TU Dresden) considered the affect and aesthetics of graphic narratives of illness and disability. Mr Brady Forrest (George Washington University) examined the overlap between emotions and disability in queer and affect theory. Finally, Dr Barden explored ways in which, from the mid-19th Century onwards, institutions of confinement have stoked antipathy toward people with cognitive impairments.
These and the other seminars in the series were held at Hope and introduced by Dr Bê, Dr Cheyne, Dr Feeney, Dr Herat, Dr Houston, Dr Penketh, Dr Pritchard, and Dr Waite, and all were well attended by academics, students, and other people interested in the overarching theme of Disability and the Emotions.
That this is the journal’s 40th issue, demonstrates the sustained work of everyone on the editorial board, the book reviews editors, the comments editor, the guest editors, and the authors. Likewise, the passing of the 10th anniversary of the CCDS is a credit to the core membership and a long list of regional, national, and international visitors and associates.