1st Edition
The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Autism Studies
This handbook provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of Critical Autism Studies and explores the different kinds of knowledges and their articulations, similarities, and differences across cultural contexts and key tensions within this subdiscipline.
Critical Autism Studies is a developing area occupying an exciting space of development within learning and teaching in higher education. It has a strong trajectory within the autistic academic and advocate community in resistance and response to the persistence of autism retaining an identity as a genetic disorder of the brain.
Divided into four parts
• Conceptualising autism
• Autistic identity
• Community and culture
• Practice
and comprising 24 newly commissioned chapters written by academics and activists, it explores areas of education, Critical Race Theory, domestic violence and abuse, sexuality, biopolitics, health, and social care practices.
It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, education, health, social care, and political science.
Chapter One – Critical Autism Studies: An Introduction
Damian Milton and Sara Ryan
Part One: Conceptualising Autism
Chapter Two – First There Is A Mountain, Then There Is No Mountain, Then There Is. Whither Identity?
Larry Arnold
Chapter Three – Critically Contextualising ‘Normal’ Development and the Construction of the Autistic Individual
Charlotte Brownlow, Lindsay O’Dell, and Ding Abawi
Chapter Four – Dimensions of Difference
Dinah Murray
Chapter Five – Heterogeneity and Clustering in Autism: An Introduction for Critical Scholars
Patrick Dwyer
Chapter Six – Rational (Pathological) Demand Avoidance: As a Mental Disorder and an Evolving Social Construct
Richard Woods
Chapter Seven – Community Psychology as Reparations for Violence in the Construction of Autism Knowledge
Monique Botha
Part Two: Autistic Identity
Chapter Eight – Through the Lens of (Black) Critical Race Theory
Melissa Simmonds
Chapter Nine – Postponing Humanity: Pathologising Autism, Childhood and Motherhood
Francesca Bernardi
Chapter Ten – ‘It sort of like gets squared’: Health Professionals’ Understanding of the Intersection of Autism and Gender Diversity in Young People
Magdalena Mikulak
Chapter Eleven – Autistic Young People’s Sense of Self and the Social World: A Challenge to Deficit Focused Characterisations
Emma Rice-Adams
Chapter Twelve – A Personal Account of Neurodiversity, Academia and Activism
Damian E. M. Milton
Part Three: Community and Culture
Chapter Thirteen – ‘Autopia’: A Vision for Autistic Acceptance and Belonging
Luke Beardon
Chapter Fourteen – The Moulin Rouge and the Rouge Moulin: Language, Cartesianism, Republicanism and the Construct of Autism in France
Peter Crosbie
Chapter Fifteen – Support on whose Terms? Competing Meanings of Support Aimed at Autistic People
Hanna Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, Damian Milton and Lindsay O´Dell
Chapter Sixteen – Critical Autism Parenting
Mitzi Walz
Chapter Seventeen – "Even though I’m on the Spectrum, I’m still capable of falling in love": A Bourdieusian Analysis of Representations of Autism and Sexuality on Love on the Spectrum
Allison Moore
Chapter Eighteen – Seeking Sunflowers: The Biopolitics of Autism at the Airport
Katherine Runswick-Cole and Dan Goodley
Part Four: Practice
Chapter Nineteen – Autistic Identity, Culture, Community, and Space for Well-being
Chloe Farahar
Chapter Twenty – Contemplating Teacher Talk through a Critical Autism Studies Lens
Nick Hodge, Patty Douglas, Madeleine Kruth, Stephen Connolly, Nicola Martin, Kendra Gowler, and Cheryl Smith
Chapter Twenty-one - Models of Helping and Coping with Autism
Steven K. Kapp
Chapter Twenty-two – Critical Approaches to Autism Support Practice: Engaging Situated Reflection and Research
Joseph Long
Chapter Twenty-three – From Disempowerment to Wellbeing and Flow: Enabling Autistic Communication in Schools
Rebecca Wood
Chapter Twenty-four - Autistic Voices in Autistic Research: Towards Active Citizenship in Autism Research
Krysia Emily Waldock and Nathan Keates
Biography
Damian Milton is a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent. Damian’s interest in autism began when his son was diagnosed in 2005 as autistic aged 2 and he was diagnosed with Asperger’s in 2009 aged 36. Damian’s primary focus is on increasing the meaningful participation of autistic people and people with learning disabilities in the research process and chairs the Participatory Autism Research Collective (PARC).
Sara Ryan is a Professor of Social Care, Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on autism, learning disabilities, and marginalised groups.
