Critical Neurodiversity Studies
Divergent Textualities in Literature and Culture
Critical Neurodiversity Studies
Divergent Textualities in Literature and Culture
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Description
Bringing together cutting-edge research on neurodiversity as an evolving theme in Disability Studies and the wider Medical Humanities, this book introduces a new, more inclusive field of scholarship for literary and cultural studies that explores the potential of neurodiverse scholarly practice in literary and cultural studies.
Bringing together a range of scholars and writers – the majority of whom identify as neurodivergent – this book critiques the assumption that writers, readers and editors share a uniform sensory, linguistic and social response to cultural production. Drawing on critical disability studies to question the idea that there is a 'normal' human subject, it moves beyond representations of neurodivergent characters and questions common depictions of neurodivergence as special talents or social deficits.
Chapters move beyond a singular focus on the representation of neurodivergence and explore what can be known or understood only when we engage in close and attentive reading to atypical deployments of language, form and genre. In essence, asking what it means in practice to perform a 'neurodivergent reading' of literary texts.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction: Jenny Bergenmar, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, Louise Creechan, Durham University, UK, and Anna Stenning, University of Leeds, UK : Critical neurodiversity studies: The contribution of literary and cultural studies
Section 1 Frameworks
Chapter 1: Leni Van Goidsenhoven, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands: Reading porously: How Landschip's oeuvre invites us to read beyond what we think we know
Chapter 2: Sarinah O'Donoghue, University of Aberdeen, UK: 'Read between the signs': Autism, sensory experience, and narrative Invention
Chapter 3: Arya Thampuran, Durham University, UK: Re-embodying difference: Race, space, and neurodiverse realities
Chapter 4: Abs Ashley, University of Bristol, UK: Neuroqueer (a)socialities: Mapping out neurotrans textualities through literary ephemera
Section 2 Readings
Chapter 5: Louise Creechan, Durham University, UK: The Lifted Veil: Neurodivergence, narrative, and scholarship
Chapter 6: Laura Seymour, University of Oxford, UK: “All discourses but my own afflict me”: Morose's house as a seventeenth-century autistic utopia (Epicoene, 1609)
Chapter 7: Liselotte van der Gucht, Ghent University, Belgium: 'Words that smack and tremble': Narrating neurodivergence in Ingeborg Bachmann's The Book of Franza
Chapter 8: Chiara Montalti, University of Bologna, Italy: Neurodivergent futures: Community, vulnerability, and social change in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed series
Chapter 9: Jenny Bergenmar, University of Gothenburg, Sweden: Humorous failures. Neurodivergence in scandinavian young adult literature
Chapter 10: Alice Hagopian, Queen's University Belfast, UK: Albert Camus' L'Étranger. Reparative neurodivergent reading as provocation
Section 3 Writings
Chapter 11: Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Södertörn University, Sweden and Anna Nygren, Gothenburg University, Sweden: An autistic writerness: Exploring autistic reader/writer agency
Chapter 12: James McGrath, Leeds Beckett University, UK: AutisTime: Imagined friends and borrowed clocks
Chapter 13: Sophie Sexon, University of Glasgow, UK, and Hope Doherty-Harrison, University of Edinburgh, UK: Wounded attachments: How two neurodivergent scholars connected with medieval literature and each other
Product details
| Published | Aug 07 2025 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 240 |
| ISBN | 9781350421172 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 7 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Series | Critical Interventions in the Medical and Health Humanities |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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