Congratulations to Eva Lupold the Marsh-Gillette Fellow for 2016-17
Eva Lupold’s dissertation adopts an interdisciplinary approach that bridges disability studies, girlhood studies, and media studies. The project examines discourses surrounding disabled girlhoods that circulate in mass media which are constructed by adult “authorities,” as well as the way that disabled girls negotiate such discourses in online platforms. Using Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, Eva assesses the kinds of knowledges that become produced in relation to disabled girls in media, considers what sorts of knowledges remain invisible or get discredited, and asks how such knowledge production is linked to power. Early chapters focus on supercrip tropes and inspiration porn in discourses surrounding disabled girl athletes, on the relationships between sexuality and beauty in discourses surrounding disabled girls in the fashion industry, and on discourses of criminality and victimization in stories about the abuse of disabled girls (which in turn force reconsiderations of concepts like agency). Later chapters focus on modes of discursive positioning that disabled girls utilize in online platforms such as blogs. Other considerations addressed by Eva’s research include: the relationships between discourses of “exceptionality” and the everyday lived experiences of disability; the emotional appeals discourses of disabled girlhoods contain; and the relationships between contemporary discourses of disabled girlhoods and neoliberal landscapes.