Understanding Disability

Ranu Uniyal is a bilingual poet.  She is Professor and Head Department of English, University of Lucknow. She has written four books of poetry- Across the Divide (2006), December Poems (2012), The Day We Went Strawberry Picking In Scarborough (2018) and Saeeda Ke Ghar (Hindi poems 2021).  She was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Hull, United Kingdom. Her areas of interest are women and literature, post colonial studies and disability studies. She has published extensively in India and abroad. Her major publications include: Women and Landscape: The Fiction of Margaret Drabble and Anita Desai (2000), Women in Indian Writing: From Difference to Diversity (2009), coedited Raja Rao’s Kanthapura (2007), Reading Gandhi: Perspectives in the 21st Century"(2022), and "Mahatma Gandhi: Essays on Life and Literature " (2023). She coedited a Special issue onSouth Asian Women’s Writing ZAA quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, 2018.  She also works for people with special needs in Lucknow (PYSSUM.org).Fatima Rizvi is Professor in the Department of English and Modern European languages, University of Lucknow. Her areas of academic interest include colonial and postcolonial studies, translation studies, and Urdu studies. Her research papers have been published in journals of national and international repute and in anthologies of criticism. She translates Urdu and Hindi. She has published Beyond the stars and Other Stories (2021, Women Unlimited), a translation of Qurratulain Hyder’s Sitaron se Aage (1947). She is a Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize and Jawad Memorial Prize awardee.

• Disability And Empirical Experiences.- I can Hear her Breathing: Disabled writers writing disability.- Pilot Research Study: Utilizing the EMDR Integrative Group Treatment Protocol Online to Help Parents with the Stresses of Having a Special Needs Child.- Social Role Valorization Theory in India: An Idea with Consequences.- Disability In Literature, Film And Theatre.- The Mad Mother in the 1BHK- Hallowing and Harrowing Positions in Jerry Pinto’s.- (No) Shared Towers: Performing the Bipolar in Em and the Big Hoom.- Disability, Sexuality and Postcoloniality in Bengali Fiction.- Normalizing Disability: Discourses of the Decolonized Body.- Disabled Identities and the Linguistic World: Exploring Dysfunctionalities in Leela Gour Broome's Flute in the Forest.- From Narrative Prosthesis to Disability Counternarrative: Reading Cognitive Difference in Aparna Sen’s 15 Park Avenue.- Changing Social Perspectives to Disability in Hindi Films Dosti and Barfi.- Disability and Gender Interface in Dattani’s Tara.- People of Determination – Making Achievements, Overcoming Challenges.- Education and Labour Market for Persons with Disabilities in India.- Honk Honk: Women, You Drive Crazy.- Contesting Representation, Writing Self: A Critical Study of Disabled Life Narratives, A Bumblebee’s Balcony and One Little Finger.- Shaping the Disability Discourse: From Theoretical Groundwork to Lived Experiences.

“This book is an exploration of a potentially emerging area of disability studies. … Each part locates the disabled experience in a distinct field of theory and practice, arts and culture, and social and political interventions. … Most importantly, though registering the traumas of disability faced by people in real life, the book retains an optimistic approach forcing, suggesting, and manifesting the positive changes in accommodating the interests of disabled people in society, culture, institutions, infrastructure, mindsets, and popular imagination.” (Raj Gaurav Verma, Asiatic, Vol. 18 (1), June, 2024)“The book takes a deep dive into the topic of disability ... . The book also sheds light on how Disability Studies has become an emerging academic field … . I found the book to be well-organised and easy to comprehend, even though it covers some complex and medical aspects of disability. ... On the bright side, the book is available in a digital format that enables readers to keep track of any essay updates.” (Nikita Yadav, Rhetorica - A Literary Journal of Arts, Vol. 4 (1), 2024)