David Bolt
David Bolt is Professor of Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, where he is Director of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies and the Disability Studies MA. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (Liverpool University Press); a series editor of Literary Disability Studies (Palgrave Macmillan/Springer); and a general editor of A Cultural History of Disability (Bloomsbury).
Biography
David Bolt is Professor in the Department of Disability and Education, Course Leader on the Disability Studies MA, and Director of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies (Liverpool Hope University). He is Founder of the International Network of Literary and Cultural Disability Scholars, and his work in disability studies has been widely recognised in both the humanities and the social sciences. He is author of The Metanarrative of Blindness: A Re-reading of Twentieth-Century Anglophone Writing (University of Michigan Press, 2014/16); has published in journals such as The Explicator, Textual Practice, Disability and Society, The Midwest Quarterly, Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, British Journal of Visual Impairment, Entre dos mundos, New Zealand Journal of Disability Studies, Mosaic, and Journal of Further and Higher Education; and has contributed chapters to books such as Short Story Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers (2014), Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies (2012), and Language, Bodies, and Health (2011). He is Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Disability Research, Lancaster University. He is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (Liverpool University Press and Project MUSE). He has collaborated on the editing of other projects, including a special issue of the Review of Disability Studies. He is Book Series Editor, with Julia Miele Rodas and Elizabeth J. Donaldson, of Literary Disability Studies (Palgrave Macmillan). He is editor of Changing social attitudes toward disability: Perspectives from historical, cultural, and educational studies (Routledge, 2014). He is joint editor, with Claire Penketh, of Disability, Avoidance, and the Academy: Challenging Resistence (Routledge, 2016) and, with Julia Miele Rodas and Elizabeth J. Donaldson, The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability (Ohio State University Press, 2012/15). In addition, he is an Editorial Board Member of Disability and Society, the Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, and the Journal of Language and Discrimination, Executive Board Member of Considering Disability, as well as an occasional reviewer for British Journal of Special Education, British Journal of Visual Impairment, Disability Studies Quarterly, Literature Compass, and Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs. He has also been external reviewer for Manchester University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and the grant-awarding Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Swiss National Science Foundation.Education
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PhD, University of Staffordshire, UK, 2004
PGCLTHE, Liverpool Hope University, UK, 2011
Literary Studies BA, University of Staffordshire, UK, 2000
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Disability Studies
Cultural representation
Education
Websites
Centre for Culture & Disability Studies
David Bolt academia.edu
Disability Studies (MA)
Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
Literary Disability Studies
Books
Articles
Radio blindness: interdisciplinarity, ocularnormativity, and young people’s preparation for academia
Published: May 16, 2019 by Journal of Further and Higher Education
Authors: David Bolt
Disability studies and radio studies are brought together to predicate and inform the analysis of a sample of education-centred discussions featured in In Touch, a long-running BBC Radio 4 programme made for, and by, people who have visual impairments. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is applied to the sub-themes of mainstream-special schooling and social interaction, which are organised in accordance with the tripartite model of disability in order to avoid one-dimensional readings.
Pretending to be a normal human being
Published: Jul 25, 2016 by Disability & Society
Authors: David Bolt
This article is about the place of disability in the British sitcom Peep Show. CDA is employed to probe the relationship between casual word choice and broader themes such as normalcy, humour, and social attitudes. This analysis is informed by classic and new work in cultural disability studies, as well as by work in literary studies and television studies. Despite its apparent irrelevance to disability studies, Peep Show reveals much about conversational invocations of disability.
Enabling the Classroom and the Curriculum
Published: Mar 04, 2016 by Journal of Further and Higher Education
Authors: David Bolt
In this article the tripartite model of disability is applied to the lived experience of twenty-first-century higher education. The tripartite model facilitates a complex understanding of disability that recognises assumptions and discrimination but not at the cost of valued identity. This being so, not only the normative positivisms and non-normative negativisms but also the non-normative positivisms of the classroom and the curriculum are explored.
Negative to the extreme: the problematics of the RNIB’s See the Need campaign
Published: Jan 07, 2016 by Disability & Society
Authors: David Bolt
Subjects:
Media and Cultural Studies
This article reports the findings of research about the RNIB’s advertising campaign. Under the methodological rubric of Critical Discourse Analysis, two paradigms were applied as research instruments: an advertising aesthetic was used in the primary analysis; and the tripartite model of disability was used in the secondary analysis. This analysis of various texts culminated in the conclusion that the RNIB’s campaign is fundamentally contradictory.
Editorial: The Importance of Disability Research
Published: Nov 01, 2015 by Revista de La Facultad de Medicina
Authors: David Bolt
Why is disability research important? When asked this question I tend to respond by revising it in my head (if not out loud). Why is disability research so important? Why is any research important? I might go on in this vein but my point is that disability research has the potential to improve understandings of the most fundamental aspect of the human condition —namely, the diversity of minds and bodies.
Not forgetting happiness: the tripartite model of disability and its application
Published: Aug 17, 2015 by Disability and Society
Authors: David Bolt
This interdisciplinary article draws on the social sciences to posit a tripartite model from which literary research into disability can benefit. Ableism and disablism are defined by normative positivisms and non-normative negativisms respectively, but consideration is also given to non-normative positivisms.
The Starfish Paradigm
Published: Jan 01, 2014 by Short Story Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers
Authors: David Bolt
It is a curious fact that some species of starfish can regrow their damaged or lost limbs. In a few cases the limbs contain vital organs, meaning that a whole starfish can regenerate from a single limb. It is also a curious fact that, in the cultural imagination, a person‘s impairment tends to be comparably envisaged as an interim step in a narrative that strides toward unimpairment for its very resolution...
An advertising aesthetic: Real beauty and visual impairment
Published: Jan 01, 2014 by The British Journal of Visual Impairment
Authors: David Bolt
This article considers critical responses to disability in 20th-century Anglo-American advertisements from which a problematic advertising aesthetic emerges. The aesthetic is used to test the progressiveness of a recent trilogy of Dove advertisements that represents visual impairment. The conclusion is that while there has been much progress, the ableist advertising aesthetic of decades ago remains an issue in the 21st century. More specifically...
Aesthetic Blindness: Symbolism, Realism, and Reality
Published: Jan 01, 2013 by Mosaic
Authors: David Bolt
As a representation of blindness, Maurice Maeterlinck's The Blind is highly problematic and becomes more so if we fail to engage with its social implications. This essay teases out these issues, compares their representation with contemporaneous works of realism, and illustrates the play's twenty-first-century relevance on the basis of visually impaired embodiment.
Theorizing Culture and Disability: Interdisciplinary Dialogues
Published: Jul 01, 2010 by Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal
Authors: Dan Goodley, Rebecca Mallett, Rebecca Lawthom, Lucy Burke, David Bolt
An ongoing project on interdisciplinary approaches to disability has grown from a brief exchange of e-mails between one of us, a professor of psychology and disability studies, and the other, a lecturer in disability studies and editor of a journal that focuses on literary and cultural studies of disability. The outcome of the exchange has thus far been twofold, both elements going under the title Theorizing
Photos
News
Cultural Disability Studies in Education Book Launch.
By: David Bolt
Subjects: Education, Media and Cultural Studies, Media, Journalism and Communications
Over the last few decades disability studies has emerged not
only as a discipline in itself but also as a catalyst for cultural
disability studies and Disability Studies in Education. In this
book the three areas become united in a new field that recognises
education as a discourse between tutors and students who explore
representations of disability on the levels of everything from
academic disciplines and knowledge to language and theory; from
received understandings and social attitudes to narrative and
characterisation.
Moving from late nineteenth to early twenty-first-century
representations, this book combines disability studies with
aesthetics, film studies, Holocaust studies, gender studies,
happiness studies, popular music studies, humour studies, and media
studies. In so doing it encourages discussion around
representations of disability in drama, novels, films,
autobiography, short stories, music videos, sitcoms, and
advertising campaigns. Discussions are underpinned by the
tripartite model of disability and so disrupt one-dimensional
representations.
Cultural Disability Studies in Education encourages educators and
students to engage with disability as an isolating, hurtful, and
joyful experience that merits multiple levels of representation and
offers true potential for a non-normative social aesthetic. It will
be required reading for all scholars and students of disability
studies, cultural disability studies, Disability Studies in
Education, sociology, and cultural studies.
Disability, Avoidance and the Academy Book Launch
By: David Bolt
Subjects: Education, Media and Cultural Studies, Media, Journalism and Communications
Disability is a widespread phenomenon, indeed a potentially
universal one as life expectancies rise. Within the academic world,
it has relevance for all disciplines yet is often dismissed as a
niche market or someone else’s domain. This collection
explores how academic avoidance of disability studies and
disability theory is indicative of social prejudice and highlights,
conversely, how the academy can and does engage with disability
studies.
This innovative book brings together work in the humanities and the
social sciences, and draws on the riches of cultural diversity to
challenge institutional and disciplinary avoidance. Divided into
three parts, the first looks at how educational institutions and
systems implicitly uphold double standards, which can result in
negative experiences for staff and students who are disabled. The
second part explores how disability studies informs and improves a
number of academic disciplines, from social work to performance
arts. The final part shows how more diverse cultural engagement
offers a way forward for the academy, demonstrating ways in which
we can make more explicit the interdisciplinary significance of
disability studies – and, by extension, disability theory,
activism, experience, and culture.
Disability, Avoidance and the Academy: Challenging Resistance will
interest students and scholars of disability studies, education
studies and cultural studies.
Videos
Published: Aug 06, 2018
Cultural Disability Studies in Education was launched in the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies, July 2018. The presentation was introduced by Dean of Education Prof Kenneth Newport.
Published: Jul 02, 2014
MA Student Ella Houston discusses her experience on the Disability Studies course at Liverpool Hope University.
Published: Jul 02, 2014
Dr David Bolt discusses the Disability Studies MA course at Liverpool Hope University. The Facebook page for the Disability Studies MA: https://www.facebook.com/DisabilityStudiesMA For more information on the course: http://www.hope.ac.uk/postgraduate/postgraduatecourses/disabilitystudiesma/
Published: Nov 13, 2015
CCDS Book Launch Friday 13th November Disability, Avoidance and the Academy: Challenging Resistance