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Delia Steverson

Department of English
2019 Rothman Faculty Summer Fellow

Dr. Steverson received a Rothman Faculty Summer Fellowship for her project titled “African American Literature and Disability: Toward a Black Critical Disabilities Studies Approach”.

Representations of disability permeate African American literature, from the beginning of the African American literary tradition to the contemporary period. In African American Literature and Disability: Toward a Black Critical Disabilities Studies Approach, Steverson examines the myriad ways that African American authors conceptualize black identity through disability rhetorics, which particularly focus on theories of embodiment. Throughout history, disability as an identity has been largely stigmatized. Yet, the black body since its inception in the western world, as Steverson argues, has been constructed as inherently disabled. In her project, she attends to how, in African American literature, race and disability collude at a given historical period. She suggests that the ways in which narratives about race and disability are constructed historically both subconsciously and consciously affect the way African American authors consider notions of black identity in their works. Situating the texts historically, using a methodological approach which labelled a Black Critical Disabilities Studies Approach, Steverson examines how black authors construct the black self as posited through narratives of race and disability.