Introduction: Doing Representational Detective Work Presentation
The author is Chris Bell, who is a scholar working in disability studies with relations to HIV/AIDS and race. He started revolutionizing the way disability studies was taught and studied with his works, one of which is Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions. This book was published by Michigan State University Press in 2011. In his works, he would argue how disability studies only focused on white disabilities, and that there were completely different stories left undiscovered by current disability studies scholars.
In the beginning of the introduction, Bell makes it clear disability studies focuses on the social model rather than the medical model. In the next paragraph, he states a similarity between two very different categories, race and disability, in that the …show more content…
He argues that this hardship is often overlooked by Disability Studies scholars as well as African American studies scholars. Next, Bell explicitly states the main purpose of this collection. It is to explore the words “blackness” and “disability” by not only figuring out their definition but also their uses by society. He compares his own work to that of Ned Mitchell. In doing so, he is able to demonstrate the differences in definitions of disability. Figuring out definitions and uses for these terms will help gain attention to these groups of people in order to understand their culture, one that is completely different from the ones already known. Bell then tells the reader the structure of the collection. Since it is a collection of works, there is an abundance of information in different branches of the study. What I found really impressive about how this collection is structured is Bell’s ability to connect one article to the