The Disability Studies Reader collects for the first time representative texts from the newly emerging field of disability studies. People with disabilities comprise fifteen per cent of the population nationally and worldwide, making them the largest physical minority. Yet they have been marginalized not only in society at large but within the discourses of knowledge. This volume represents a major advance in presenting the most important writings about disability, with an emphasis on those writers working from a materialist and postmodern perspective. Drawing together experts in cultural studies, literary criticism, sociology, biology, the visual arts, pedagogy, and postcolonial studies, the collection attempts to provide a comprehensive approach to the issue of disability by problematizing the notion of the normal body, revealing ableist assumptions in the politics and poetics of social and physical space, sexuality, language, textuality, access to resources, and public policy decisions concerning the body. Contributors: Adrianne Asch, Douglas Baynton, Bradley S. Berens, Lois Bragg, Lerita M. Coleman, Terry Collins, Dirksen Bauman, Jennifer Drake, Martha Edwards, Michelle Fine, Anne Finger, Erving Goffman, Harlan Hahn, David Heavey, Ruth Hubbard, Sue Kroeger, Harlan Lane, David Mitchel, Michael Oliver, Oliver Sacks, Marj Schneider, Susan Sontag, Alan Sutherland, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Sanjeev Upretty, Susan Wendell, Martha Winzer.