Of A Sound Mind & Body

Thoughts on Disability in American Media

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Welcome to Of a Sound Mind & Body, a dialogue on disability representation in American media. Our goal here is to begin a conversation on how disability and mental illness is presented in films, television, video games, podcasts, and images. Look around, meet our contributors, and join the conversation!

Introduction Part 1: Disability Representation

April 22, 2017

In middle school, one of my teachers used a wheelchair to get around. He had lost the use of his legs early in life, though I never asked him the details of that. He was a smart, funny, and tremendously kind person. He’d always joke about himself—laughing about distracted driving while he was on the … More Introduction Part 1: Disability Representation

Introduction Part 2: Key Terms

April 22, 2017

Stereotypes are “oversimplified images of a person or group.”1 We often rely on stereotypes as behavioral indictors that are engrained in society. They help us anticipate how to interact with the people we encounter in our daily lives. The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue … More Introduction Part 2: Key Terms

Introduction Part 3: Our Analysis

April 22, 2017

Our analysis will evaluate the representations of disability and mental illness on a spectrum of visibility. Not only is disability often perceived in terms of visibility (e.g. obvious social abnormal cues versus subtle diversions from “normalcy”), but it is often represented along the same spectrum. The two extremes of disability representation are that disability is romanticized/demonized … More Introduction Part 3: Our Analysis

Recent Highlights

I want to make room for a hard conversation. The relationship between disability and disease is often blurred, in part due to depictions that disabilities need to be cured. Both disability and disease can define people based on their limitations. In doing so, we often have a default ideal of ability and health that somehow constitutes humanness.