The editors of the fourth volume of the Edinburgh German Yearbook (2010) would like to invite contributions on the subject of ‘Disability in German literature, film and theatre’.

Like Gender Studies, Postcolonialism and Queer Theory, Disability Studies is part of the broader discussion of difference and “otherness,” and is largely situated within debates about the politics of identity, social processes, human rights, ethics and discrimination. As a critical resistance strategy, Disability Studies has sought to retrieve the silenced voices of disabled figures from their cultural locations in literature, film and theatre, and discuss their position in relation to the counterpoint of normalcy.

During the last decade, Disability Studies has explored the binary construction of “able” and “disabled,” exclusion strategies, and the ways in which the disabled body has been decentred, marginalized, and has suffered under the surveillance of controlling social and medical structures and mechanisms that practice power over the individual. Disability Studies is now entering a phase of positive (self-)reflection and is starting to address the ontological politics of disability. In the light of this turning point, this volume sets aside the division between “able” and “disabled” bodies, and moves away from the politics of the social and medical models of reaction to disability, and from viewing the disabled subject as representative of the postmodern condition of fragmentation. It focuses instead on cultural (re-)presentations of disabilities that raise questions about “the humane gaze,” and seeks to establish disability as a condition that historically has been at the heart of the discussion of humanity, modernity, and the issues of social and moral behaviour in literature, film, and theatre in the German language.

Suggested points of focus include the humanizing and (de-)humanizing gazes; the experience of the modern condition and the discourse of disability; the construction, performance and (re-)presentations of the dis/abled body; the abelist and disabled gazes; the effects of inclusion and exclusion strategies; and present and future heterotopias of disability.

*Abstracts for proposed contributions should be submitted to both editors by email in English or German (100-200 words) by 30th March 2009*:
Dr Eleoma Joshua (eleoma.joshua@ed.ac.uk)
Dr Michael Schillmeier (m.schillmeier@lmu.de).

Publication will be in the autumn of 2010, and the deadline for finished contributions will be 30 January 2010. The papers must be in English or German.

EGY is an annual publication in German Studies, published by Camden House. It intends to encourage and disseminate lively and open discussions of themes pertinent to German Studies, viewed from a wide variety of perspectives inside and outside the conventional boundaries of the discipline.