Intersectional Crip Theory: (Re)presenting Intersections of Illness, Disability, and Madness with Gender and Sexuality

Crip theory emerged in the twenty-first century primarily from two interdisciplinary fields: queer theory and disability studies. From Gutter and Killacky’s 2004 collection Queer Crips and McRuer and Sandahl’s interventions in 2006 and 2003 respectively (which reclaimed the intersection of disabilities and sexuality) to Kafer’s Feminist, Queer, Crip in 2018, Puar’s The Right to Maim, and Schalk’s 2022 Black Disability Politics, intersectional approaches to disability, chronic illnesses, and mental health within expressive culture have comprised urgent fields of exploration, engagement, and activism. Critiques of selfhood, embodiment, and performativity have centered on the ways in which systemic oppressions and constructions of normalcy can be interrupted and resisted by unruly subjects and their imaginings of other worlds and possibilities. From crip temporalities to crip spacialities, crip theory fundamentally interrogates and expands norms. It “bends” clocks and brick and mortar to makes possible inclusive expressivity (Samuels 2017). We seek papers reflecting the diverse experiences and narratives of marginalized groups, especially those from 2SLGBTQI+ and BIPOC communities, to inform new directions in critical disability studies. We invite scholars, writers, and activists to submit papers that investigate these themes within expressive texts (fictional and non-) and/or other forms of cultural representation, examining how expressive artists represent, challenge, and reflect the lived experiences of those with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and/or mental health conditions when considered in relation to gender and sexuality. We welcome both contributions that focus on the content of cultural representation and those that focus on the conditions of its production (i.e. institutional supports and/or barriers; dis/enabling material conditions of production and/or reception ethical considerations of production and dissemination of work by “able-bodied” artists that represent dis/abled subjects and/or involve such subjects in their process of production).
At their intersection with gender and/or sexuality, we welcome explorations of disabilities visible and invisible, physical and mental/cognitive (including mental illness, learning disabilities, and neurodivergence, among others).

Foci of inquiry within our broader area of exploration might include, but are not limited to: intersectionality and identity politics; ableism and embodiment studies (including fat studies)
HIV/AIDS studies/discourse
the effects of capitalism/neo-liberalism; global geopolitics and inequalities
epi/pandemics and epidemiological policies, practices, and outcomes
migration and global mobility
technologies of the self
trauma and care studies
and non-realist/speculative fiction and/or auto-fiction (including genres such as afrofuturism; the gothic; cyberpunk; apocalyptic fiction; and technoutopianism, among others).