Description
Spotlighting the figure of the exceptional disabled girl as she circulates in the contemporary mediascape, this dissertation traces how this figure shapes the contours of a post-Americans with Disabilities Act structure of feeling. I contend that the figure of the exceptional disabled girl operates as a reparative future girl. As a reparative figure, she is deployed as a sign of the triumph of U.S. benevolence, as well as a stand-in for the continuing fantasy and potential of the promise of the American dream, or the good life. Affectively managing the fraying of the good life through a shoring up of ablenationalism, the figure of the exceptional disabled girl rehabilitates the nation from a place of ignorance to understanding, from a place of nervous anxiety to one of hopeful promise, and from a precarious present to a not-so-bleak-looking future.
Placing feminist cultural studies theories of affect in conversation with feminist disability studies and girlhood studies, this dissertation maps evocations of disabled girlhood. It traces how certain affective states as an intersubjective glue stick to specific disabled girls’ bodies and how these intersubjective attachments generate an emergent affective atmosphere that attempts to repair the fraying fantasy of the good life. Utilizing affect as methodology and object of analysis, this dissertation interrogates ambivalent visual artifacts: ranging from the “real” figure of the disabled girl through YouTubers, Charisse Living with Cerebral Palsy and Rikki Poynter, to a fictional disabled girl in Degrassi: Next Class; spanning from physically disabled beauty pageant contestants to autistic girls learning how to dance; and, finally, looking to a black disabled girl in her life and death, Jerika Bolen. I contend that through their roles as disability educators, shared objects of happiness and optimism, and pedagogues of death, exceptional disabled girls have been deployed as guides on a new roadmap to ideal, affective post-ADA citizenhood.
Placing feminist cultural studies theories of affect in conversation with feminist disability studies and girlhood studies, this dissertation maps evocations of disabled girlhood. It traces how certain affective states as an intersubjective glue stick to specific disabled girls’ bodies and how these intersubjective attachments generate an emergent affective atmosphere that attempts to repair the fraying fantasy of the good life. Utilizing affect as methodology and object of analysis, this dissertation interrogates ambivalent visual artifacts: ranging from the “real” figure of the disabled girl through YouTubers, Charisse Living with Cerebral Palsy and Rikki Poynter, to a fictional disabled girl in Degrassi: Next Class; spanning from physically disabled beauty pageant contestants to autistic girls learning how to dance; and, finally, looking to a black disabled girl in her life and death, Jerika Bolen. I contend that through their roles as disability educators, shared objects of happiness and optimism, and pedagogues of death, exceptional disabled girls have been deployed as guides on a new roadmap to ideal, affective post-ADA citizenhood.
Details
Title
- I wouldn't want to be anyone else: disabled girlhood and post-ADA structures of feeling
Contributors
- Todd, Anastasia (Author)
- Switzer, Heather (Thesis advisor)
- Fonow, Mary Margaret (Thesis advisor)
- Himberg, Julia (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2016
Subjects
- Gender Studies
- Women's Studies
- ablenationalism
- Affect
- disability
- Girlhood
- Women with disabilities--United States--Psychology.
- Women with disabilities
- Women with disabilities--United States--Social conditions.
- Women with disabilities
- Women with disabilities--Government policy--United States.
- Women with disabilities
- Girls--United States--Psychology.
- Girls
- Girls--United States--Social conditions.
- Girls
- Girls--Government policy--United States.
- Girls
Resource Type
Collections this item is in
Note
- thesisPartial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2016
- bibliographyIncludes bibliographical references (pages 132-143)
- Field of study: Gender studies
Citation and reuse
Statement of Responsibility
by Anastasia Todd