Enabling/Disabling: Fanfiction and Disability Discourse

Authors

  • AmyLea Clemons PhD, Associate Professor of English Francis Marion University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v8i2.500

Abstract

While fanfiction ostensibly provides a safe space to explore and challenge ideologies about any belief media texts reify, a review of fan studies literature shows little attention to disability from scholars in the field. This erasure seems odd, since Archive of Our Own, the fanfiction archive associated with the Organization for Transformative Works, lists “disability” in its list of “most popular” tags, and most fandoms include a significant body of texts that disable its characters (“Tags”). Blindness, deafness, injuries leading to mobility impairments, and other visible and invisible disabilities feature strongly as tropes in fanfictions themselves. Clearly fandom has something to do with disability of all kinds: physical, cognitive, and emotional.

Author Biography

AmyLea Clemons, PhD, Associate Professor of English Francis Marion University

PhD, Associate Professor of English, Francis Marion University

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Published

2019-04-28

How to Cite

Clemons, A. (2019). Enabling/Disabling: Fanfiction and Disability Discourse. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 8(2), 247–278. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v8i2.500

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2019): Disability and/in/through Fanfiction

Section

Fanfiction Archive

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