Forum: Introduction: Art History and Disability

Abstract

Art history has not been as engaged with disability studies as much as have other areas of the humanities and liberal arts. Disability studies scholars have written about artwork featuring disabled subjects and the work of disabled artists, engaging varying degrees of art historical methodology, whereas art historians have analyzed images by and about disabled people with limited awareness with disability studies. This special issue aims to encourage more interdisciplinary work between the fields and was inspired by three conference panels at the Southeast College Art Conference: Visualizing Disability: Representations of Disability in Art and Visual Culture (2011), Disability and Performance: Bodies on Display (2012), and Photographing the Body (2013).