Phallacies

Features

• Addresses an under-explored topic that is applicable to the academic disciplines of history, gender studies, American studies, sociology, cultural studies, disability studies, social work, psychology, etc.
• Examines the intersections between masculinity and disability across the past 60 years.
• Integrates material on several types of disabilities -- psychiatric disabilities, blindness, physical disabilities, intellectual disability, and war-related disabilities.
• Weaves issues of class and race into their narratives of masculinity and disability, and addresses clinical and policy implications.
• Synergistically integrates critiques related to gender, disability, cultural history, sociology, and women's studies in diverse and creative ways.

About the Author(s)

Kathleen M. Brian, PhD, is a Lecturer in the Liberal Studies Department at Western Washington University. Brian's recent work has appeared in the Journal of Literary and Disability Studies, the History of Psychiatry, and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.

James W. Trent, Jr., PhD, is a Visiting Scholar in the Heller School at Brandeis University. He is author of The Manliest Man: Samuel G. Howe and the Contours of Nineteenth-Century American Reform (2012) and Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States (2016).

Reviews

That masculinity is an embodied practice has become epigrammatic to researchers. But what about when that body is damaged, incomplete, disfigured, partial, or somehow other? In this breakthrough interdisciplinary collection, 17 scholars and writers -- historians, literary and media scholars, contemporary writers -- explore the intersection of disabilities and masculinities, enabling us to "see" that embodiment, both the normative and the problematized, anew. - Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, Executive Director, Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities

Phallacies provides an essential map to multiple locations where disabilities and masculinities have materialized, from clinics, to courtrooms, to theatres, to public streets, to private domestic spaces. The importance of studying disability at the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and class has been firmly established in the vibrant, interdisciplinary field of disability studies. However, more than any other, this anthology makes it possible to pursue that study historically, in thick, nuanced, comparative, and expansive ways. - Robert McRuer, PhD, Professor, Department of English, The George Washington University; author, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability

"Kathleen Brian and James W. Trent Jr.'s new edited volume Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity is an ambitious, interdisciplinary exploration of the many interconnections between manhood and disability. Together, the editors and contributors have compiled a book that approaches masculinity and disability with unprecedented nuance. With a great diversity of time periods, geographic locations, and issues presented, the reader is given a sense that the volume seeks not so much to answer overarching questions, but rather that the authors are playing with the complex, puzzling, and sometimes unknowable edges of our categories of "man" and "disabled"... The book's loose organization and diversity gives it a sense of energy and creativity that for the most part suggests an exciting, growing field of inquiry." --Disability Studies Quarterly

"The main feature and achievement of the book that is of interest to disability studies scholars will probably be its multifaceted examination of shifting understandings and representations of masculinity and disability, and how these have affected the lives of disabled men and boys historically, often in challenging ways...[A] strength of the book is the impressive range of historical sources and methods its authors use. In addition to cartoons and begging cards, other visual documents, such as advertisements and artworks, are examined. Films, memoirs, novels, institutional records and newspaper reports also feature prominently, and there are many other sources listed in the book's notes" --Disability and Society