Disability Studies

Abstract Of the wide variety of disability studies scholarship published in 2024, much of the field was preoccupied with representations of disability in advertising, with disability as a spectacle, and with disability as expressed through voiceless, silent, or disfigured faces. Such topics are omnipresent, but their ubiquity often means they are assumed and under-interrogated. This review of a selection of books and journal articles teases out such assumptions, whilst also taking into account the significant changes to disability studies scholarship and disability justice movements given ongoing political unrest; namely, the re-election of Donald Trump in the USA and the UK government’s proposals to cut disability benefits across Britain. The review considers Ella Houston’s Advertising Disability, Erin Pritchard’s Dwarfism Arts and Advocacy: Creating Our Own Positive Identity, and the autumn 2024 issue of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. Following an introduction, it is divided into four sections: 1. Advertising, which examines the complex position of the disabled body in the world of adverts and marketing; 2. Spectacle, which expands on the economic and social positioning of disability, often in the form of professional roles taken up by or denied to disabled people; 3. Voicelessness, which posits the possibility that silence is not a privation of sound but a rejection of normative communication; and 4. Further Research, which points to where future analyses of disability studies literature could proceed.