The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (Oxford Handbooks) - Softcover

"The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies is a ground-breaking contribution to the field of cultural disability studies and to the recent arrival of musicology within this field of study. This publication is a must for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the representation of disability in music. Readers interested in the participation of disabled people in music-making (rather than in cultural representations of impairments) will find a valuable number of essays. And, finally, those interested in the perspectives that impaired musicians can offer about their embodiments, and in research that promotes their inclusion in musicmaking, will also find valuable contributions." --Context "[T]he Handbook encompasses an impressive assemblage of historical and current musical contexts, artists, and audiences. It is a breakthrough endeavor and opens the door, certainly, for the many scholars now beginning this work. As its editors suggest, it should encourage music scholars to consider cultural concepts of disability, and disability studies scholars to remember the significance of music in experiences of disability. We all have much to teach each other." --Disability Studies Quarterly "Academics, students, and interested parties in both music and disability studies will find valuable information here; several of the essays may also interest historians in related fields or teachers seeking to help disabled students participate fully in music or discover a creative and communicative outlet. Its timely contribution to both fields cannot go overlooked." --Journal of Musicological Research

The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies represents a comprehensive state of current research for the field of Disability Studies and Music. The forty-two chapters in the book span a wide chronological and geographical range, from the biblical, the medieval, and the Elizabethan, through the canonical classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to modernist styles and contemporary musical theater and popular genres, with stops along the way in post-Civil War America, Ghana and the South Pacific, and many other interesting times and places. Disability is a broad, heterogeneous, and porous identity, and that diversity is reflected in the variety of bodily conditions under discussion here, including autism and intellectual disability, deafness, blindness, mobility impairment often coupled with bodily difference, and cognitive and intellectual impairments. Amid this diversity of time, place, style, medium, and topic, the chapters share two core commitments. First, they are united in their theoretical and methodological connection to Disability Studies, especially its central idea that disability is a social and cultural construction. Disability both shapes and is shaped by culture, including musical culture. Second, these essays individually and collectively make the case that disability is not something at the periphery of culture and music, but something central to our art and to our humanity.