Disability and Dissensus is a comprehensive collection of essays that reflects the interdisciplinary nature of critical cultural disability studies. The volume offers a selection of texts by numerous specialists in different areas of the humanities, both well-established scholars and young academics, as well as practitioners and activists from the USA, the UK, Poland, Ireland, and Greece. Taking inspiration from Critical Disability Studies and Jacques Ranciere's philosophy, the book critically engages with the changing modes of disability representation in contemporary cultures. It sheds light both on inspirations and continuities as well as tensions and conflicts within contemporary disability studies, fostering new understandings of human diversity and contributing to a dissensual ferment of thought in the academia, arts, and activism. Contributors are: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Dan Goodley, Marek Mackiewicz-Ziccardi, Malgorzata Sugiera, David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder, Maria Tsakiri, Murray K. Simpson, James Casey, Agnieszka Izdebska, Edyta Lorek-Jezinska, Dorota Krzeminska, Jolanta Rzeznicka-Krupa, Wiktoria Siedlecka-Dorosz, Katarzyna Ojrzynska, Christian O'Reilly, and Len Collin.

Transforming Saints explores the transformation and function of the images of holy females within wider religious, social, and political contexts of Old Spain and New Spain from the Spanish conquest to Mexican independence. The chapters here examine the rise of the cults of the lactating Madonna, St. Anne, St. Librada, St. Mary Magdalene, and the Suffering Virgin. Concerned with holy figures presented as feminine archetypes, images that came under Inquisition scrutiny, as well as cults suspected of concealing indigenous influences, Charlene VillaseNor Black argues that these images would come to reflect the empowerment and agency of women in viceregal Mexico. Her close analysis of the imagery additionally demonstrates artists' innovative responses to Inquisition censorship and the new artistic demands occasioned by conversion. The concerns that motivated the twenty-first century protests against Chicana artists Yolanda LOpez in 2001 and Alma LOpez in 2003 have a long history in the Hispanic world-anxieties about the humanization of sacred female bodies and fears of indigenous influences infiltrating Catholicism. In this context Black also examines a number of important artists in depth, including El Greco, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, and Pedro de Mena in Spain and Naples and Baltasar de Echave IbIa, Juan Correa, CristObal de Villalpando, and Miguel Cabrera.

It's often said that we are what we wear. Tracing an American trajectory in fashion, Lauren Cardon shows how we become what we wear. Over the twentieth century, the American fashion industry diverged from its roots in Paris, expanding and attempting to reach as many consumers as possible. Fashion became a tool for social mobility. During the late twentieth century, the fashion industry offered something even more valuable to its consumers: the opportunity to explore and perform. The works Cardon examines by Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, and Aleshia Brevard, among others illustrate how American fashion, with its array of possibilities, has offered a vehicle for curating public personas. Characters explore a host of identities as fashion allows them to deepen their relationships with ethnic or cultural identity, to reject the social codes associated with economic privilege, or to forge connections with family and community. These temporary transformations, or performances, show that identity is a process constantly negotiated and questioned, never completely fixed.

Imagining Latinidad examines how Latin American migrants use technology for public engagement, social activism, and to build digital, diasporic communities. Thanks to platforms like Facebook and YouTube, immigrants from Latin America can stay in contact with the culture they left behind. Members of these groups share information related to their homeland through discussions of food, music, celebrations, and other cultural elements. Despite their physical distance, these diasporic virtual communities are not far removed from the struggles in their homelands, and migrant activists play a central role in shaping politics both in their home country and in their host country. Contributors are: Amanda Arrais, Karla Castillo Villapudua, David S. Dalton, Jason H. Dormady, Carmen Gabriela Febles, Alvaro Gonzalez Alba, Yunuen Ysela Mandujano-Salazar, Anna Marta Marini, Diana Denisse Merchant Ley, Covadonga Lamar Prieto, Maria del Pilar Ramirez Groebli, David Ramirez Plascencia, Jessica Retis, Nancy Rios-Contreras, and Patria Roman-Velazquez.

This book provides a novel approach to the understanding and realization of the values of art. It argues that art has often been instrumentalized for state-building, to promote social inclusion of diversity, or for economic purposes such as growth or innovation. To counteract that, the authors study the values that artists and audiences seek to realize in the social practices around the arts. They develop the concept of cultural civil society to analyze how art is practiced and values are realized in creative circles and co-creative communities of spectators, illustrated with case-studies about hip-hop, Venetian art collectives, dance festivals, science-fiction fandom, and a queer museum. The authors provide a four-stage scheme that illustrates how values are realized in a process of value orientation, imagination, realization, and evaluation. The book relies on an interdisciplinary approach rooted in economics and sociology of the arts, with an appreciation for broader social theories. It integrates these disciplines in a pragmatic approach based on the work of John Dewey and more recent neo-pragmatist work to recover the critical and constructive role that cultural civil society plays in a plural and democratic society. The authors conclude with a new perspective on cultural policy, centered around state neutrality towards the arts and aimed at creating a legal and social framework in which social practices around the arts can flourish and co-exist peacefully.