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Disabling cure in twentieth-century America: disability, identity, literature and culture

Cheu, Johnson F
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054741043

Abstract Details

2003, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
My dissertation argues that Disabled people have a culture and that “disability” is a cultural experience. Scholars in the emerging field of Disability Studies have made the distinction between the “medical model” of disability that focuses on bodily materiality/impairment and a “social constructionist model” where identity is culturally constructed. One place where these two models converge is at the point of cure. This is where I enter, as I argue that cure is a socially constructed concept. Though my recurring theme in this dissertation revolves around the concept of cure, I have chosen frameworks that critique disability and the construction of cure from a position of marginality, i.e. the construction of disability as both a minority group and a minority discourse. I investigate the concept of cure in some prominent sites where theories of science and culture and their impact on disability are examined — in twentieth-century fiction, film, memoir, and performance. I argue that cure is a scientific construction applied to medical impairment, but that disability is a cultural experience and a potential identity, independent of cure. My argument that medical cure is a specific construction applied to disabled bodies and identities has implications for other fields besides disability — fields that I draw upon: medicine, sociology, and queer studies — in the ways that both disability and medical cure are configured. Theorizing cure as a cultural concept in literature and film changes our understanding of disabled bodies and thus of how we read and view them. By looking at disability from a constructionist viewpoint, I hope that we understand not only the way(s) that disability is positioned in relation to a dominant discourse of medical cure, but also the constructedness of medical cure itself.
Debra Moddelmog (Advisor)
209 p.
Literature, American
Disability Studies; Cure; Cultural Studies; American Literature; Identity Politics

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Cheu, J. F. (2003). Disabling cure in twentieth-century America: disability, identity, literature and culture [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054741043

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cheu, Johnson. Disabling cure in twentieth-century America: disability, identity, literature and culture. 2003. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054741043.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cheu, Johnson. "Disabling cure in twentieth-century America: disability, identity, literature and culture." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1054741043

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1054741043
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© 2003, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.