Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Affective Encounters and Reflexive RepresentationsChapter 1: Horror: Fearful BodymindsChapter 2: Character and Closure: Disability in CrimeChapter 3: Wondrous Texts: Science FictionChapter 4: Fantasy: Affirmation and EnchantmentChapter 5: Desirable Futures: RomanceConclusion: Reading and FeelingWorks CitedDisability in Genre Fiction: An Annotated BibliographyIndex

About the Author

Ria Cheyne is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Disability and Education at Liverpool Hope University.

Reviews

'A nuanced, interdisciplinary academic text that will be of interest to many readers who engage in discussions about emotional life, while seeking out rigorous and thoughtful literary resources... Using generous, precise while flexible readings of the selected genre-specific texts, Cheyne’s book expertly and insistently melds affect theory and cultural disability studies, thus broadening each scholarly locus in impressive ways, while breaking down proverbial silos.'
Diane R. Wiener, Wordgathering

'A significant work of scholarship that not only manages to bring together two fields – cultural disability studies and genre (orpopular) fiction studies – but also succeeds at doing so through the lens of affect theory... This collection will appeal to both seasoned scholars of these fields as well as new scholars or curious creators who wonder just where to begin with examining horror and disability.'Anelise Farris, Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research

'[Cheyne] charts a critical pathway into the nexus of disability, genre fiction, and affect. [...] This wide-ranging inquiry includes chapters on horror, crime, science fiction, fantasy, and romance, and it offers close readings of novels. Cheyne provides an annotated bibliography of more than 250 genre texts that depict disability, an invaluable resource that will support future scholarly work in literary studies, disability studies, the medical humanities, and popular culture studies. In sum, Cheyne's ground-breaking study convincingly situates genre studies and affect studies as critical modes that make possible new understandings of how the Western imagination conceives of and reacts to disability.'J. D. Harding, Saint Leo University 

'Ria Cheyne’s fascinating Disability, Literature, Genre redresses some of this deficient attention to disability in the more constrained traditions of popular genres. [...] Cheyne constructs fascinating juxtapositions, and her arguments are worthy of consideration—nowhere more than when she looks at romance, the best chapter. There, the affective nature of the genre’s texts functions clearly in our experiences of the protagonists’ interiority, offering the best opportunity for reflexive representation of disability in the book. [...] Ultimately, Cheyne’s [book] is a laudable, valuable contribution to the intersection of affective exploration with disability and genre studies.'
Jacob Horn, Extrapolation

'This essential work makes visible readerly feelings towards disability so that these might be evaluated and reconsidered. [...] In bringing into conversation two distinct strands of criticism, disability studies and genretheory, Cheyne populates her scholarly context with recognizable names from each field. [...] Cheyne's project names a terrain while smartly acknowledging that it has only begun to map such. Theoretical and textual ground is yet to be drawn, and Disability, Literature, and Genre presents readers both the direction and tools needed to do so.'
Evan Chaloupka, Disability Studies Quarterly