Disability Rhetoric

My name is Tommie McPhetridge and I am the author of “Facing the Monster: An Analysis of Disability and Misrecognition in Literature”. I drafted this essay because I am inspired by the monster narratives that are pervasive in modern literature. Specifically, I think that it is fascinating how monsters have changed from creatures of doom to beings of hope and possibility. I wanted to do further study into the nature of monstrosity, choosing disability studies to narrow my focus of understanding monsters and disability in literature. Throughout this project, I struggled to narrow my field of study to just two representations in literature. At the beginning, I had over thirty representations of monsters and disability that I wanted to look into. In the end, I chose Frankenstein due to its fundamental status as monster literature and Wonder to be its foil. There is not a lot of commentary about disability in children’s literature and I wanted to be part of the start of that path of research. Finding theories that would support my analysis of these novels was simple, I started looking at theories that touched on identity and otherness in society. Once I read about recognition theory and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s studies on freaks and disability, I knew that they would be perfect for this project. I hope that this project will remain a pseudo-living document that I can expand upon in the future, as I believe there is a lot more to say about identity, disability, and monstrosity in media.

The project itself is linked below and requires a download due to the text length and formatting.