The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication

The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication covers a broad spectrum of topics related to how we perceive and understand disability and the language, constructs, constraints and communication behavior that shape disability discourse within society. The essays and original research presented in this volume address important matters of disability identity and intersectionality, broader cultural narratives and representation, institutional constructs and constraints, and points related to disability justice, advocacy, and public policy. In doing so, this book brings together a diverse group of over 40 international scholars to address timely problems and to promote disability justice by interrogating the way people communicate not only to people with disabilities, but also how we communicate about disability, and how people express themselves through their disabled identity.

"The communication discipline has incredibly valuable insights to offer on the experience and enactment of disability. The four editors collected and organized The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication, offering tremendous breadth and depth of communication scholarship. The chapter authors span interpersonal, health, mediated, rhetorical, and critical approaches to understanding and living the experience of disability in human life. This volume represents excellence in current scholarship and practices and will be extremely valuable for scholars across academic disciplines, practitioners, and persons experiencing disability."
-Dawn O. Braithwaite, Willa Cather Professor of Communication Emerita, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA 

“Always engaging and eminently readable, the handbook includes a breadth and depth of subject matter and methodologies—ideal for the disability studies classroom. The handbook provides foundational material that contextualizes contemporary, pressing issues in the field. Most importantly, contributors never lose sight of the lived experience of disability in all its variety. I am eager to enliven and update the curriculum in my disability arts and culture courses with this exceptional collection.”
-Carrie Sandahl, PhD, Director Program on Disability Art, Culture and Humanities, Disability and Human Development at University of Illinois Chicago, USA

“This is an exciting collection of essays bringing together disability and communication, but the scope is much larger than the title suggests. Communication is expanded to include the varied uses of language, rhetoric, and media-driven content that is so crucial to our postmodern lives. There is something of great interest in every essay, and the book made me rethink many important ideas in disability studies. It is definitely a must-read book.”
- Lennard J. Davis, Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Science at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, USA

"The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication expertly explores the intersection of disability and communication and illustrates the cultural power all societies have to transmit communication frameworks that have long stigmatized the experience of disability and its representations. The Handbook deconstructs ableist communication of past and present, as well as showing how present-day empowered disabled people have more agency to control communicative structures. The Handbook interrogates many of the ways humans communicate disability concepts but with contemporary sociocultural-informed research that highlights disability identity and pride, new online communication methods, and major interactions with the ableist world. Chapters cover language, identity, intersectionality, cultural artifacts, institutional structures, activism, and social policy. Specifically, topics include: microaggressions, memes, collaborative podcasting, artificial intelligence, masking during a pandemic, accessibility in video games, Brexit, service dogs, police brutality, TikTok, Deaf children, and much more. A variety of methods are used from autoethnography to content analysis to case studies. All in all, The Handbook skillfully moves forward much-needed research that interweaves Disability Studies and Communication Studies into a substantial inquiry now but with the hope that new scholars in these fields will continue this critical work into the future." 
- Beth A. Haller, Ph.D., author, Representing Disability in an Ableist World, Essays on Mass Media 

"The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication accomplishes what all handbooks should: it positions itself as the anthology you need to guide your thinking about the intersections of the central areas of study, disability and communication; it offers groundbreaking chapters that are indispensable for further research in the fields; and it does all of this in an accessible, engaging manner.  For scholars in disability studies and communication studies, this anthology will be a required resource." 

-Robert McRuer, Professor of English, George Washington University, and author of Crip Theory (2006) and Crip Time (2018).

“This collection explores, evokes, and enmeshes the overlaps and intersections between disability and communication from a vast and impressive range of perspectives – 27 chapters! Yet the book is so clearly organized, and each chapter so well-written, that the result is both encyclopedic and concise. The Palgrave Handbook of Disability and Communication also could not feel more timely, with every chapter connecting to contemporary issues. This is a tremendous accomplishment, and an incredibly useful resource.“ 

-Jay Dolmage, Professor of English, University of Waterloo, Founding Editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. 

"Boasting an amazing collection of authors addressing disability from different perspectives and identities, this Handbook shows the importance of conceiving of disability as a complex set of professional, personal, and political relations -- always meaningful and always more than we expect. Readers are provided many pathways to encounter what disability experience and representation means to communication studies and what communication means to disability studies. The array of chapters constitutes a brilliant way to nurture deeper relations to our embodied selves."

-Tanya Titchkosky,  PhD, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Canada.  

Michael S. Jeffress, Ph.D. is a full professor and school counselor at Medical University of the Americas in St. Kitts & Nevis. He is author of Communication, Sport, and Disability: The Case of Power Soccer (2015) and editor of several volumes related to interdisciplinary disability studies, most recently Disability Representation in Film, TV, and Print Media (2021).

Joy M. Cypher, Ph.D., is a full Professor of Communication Studies at Rowan University and an Eastern Communication Association Teaching Fellow.  She is the Founding Coordinator of the Health and Science Communication interdisciplinary program at Rowan University, where she has won numerous teaching awards, including Rowan University's Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Jim Ferris, Ph.D., is a full professor and holds the Ability Center Endowed Chair in Disability Studies at The University of Toledo. He is a poet and performance artist. He is a founding member of the Disability Issues Caucus of the National Communication Association and a past president of Society for Disability Studies. He is the author of numerous books and articles.

Julie-Ann Scott-Pollock, Ph.D. is a full professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her research focuses on performance ethnography and disabled embodiment and identity as performance. She is the author of Embodied Performance as Applied Research, Art and Pedagogy (Palgrave, 2017).