Christopher Newell

This work dares to name and explore a hidden blight in society: the routine, daily and oppressive treatment of people with disabilities. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from health and welfare, sport, biotechnology, deinstitutionalisation, political life, and the treatment of refugees, this thoughtful, lively and provocative work puts disability firmly on the agenda.

Too frequently, theology has addressed issues of mental health from a largely pastoral and detached observational perspective. This book asks whether the model of an embodied and experiential theology of disability, championed by theologians such as Nancy Eiesland, can more powerfully and insightfully apply to those who are described as suffering from severe and enduring mental health problems.A Theology of Incarnation from Within Dis-Abled Minds is an auto-ethnographic journey into a question that is both deeply personal and theo-therapeutic. Utilising the author’s own experiences, it explores whether there can be an applied theology, rooted in the living ‘tradition’ of feminist and queer theology, that begins to question classical definitions of the ‘sane’ and ‘insane’. Can certain contemporary theological models of chaos, in creation and cosmology, offer a valorised place for those whose psycho-chaos is usually deemed to be of little value in western capitalist economies, except as the recipients of ‘professional compassion’? This book offers a transgressive theology of healing and wellbeing based on radical feminist Christological understanding which speaks as much of anger, chaos, and resistance as it does of peace, healing or reconciliation. Therefore, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religion and Theology, as well as those working in Psychiatry, Mental Health and Disability Studies.

Media representation of and for the disabled has been recharged in recent years with the expansion of new media worldwide. Interactive digital communications—such as the Internet, new varieties of voice and text telephones, and digital broadcasting—have created a need for a more innovative understanding of new media and disability issues. This engaging analysis offers a global perspective on how people with disabilities are represented as users, consumers, viewers, or listeners of new media, by policymakers, corporations, programmers, and the disabled themselves.

Media representation of and for the disabled has been recharged in recent years with the expansion of new media worldwide. Interactive digital communications—such as the Internet, new varieties of voice and text telephones, and digital broadcasting—have created a need for a more innovative understanding of new media and disability issues. This engaging analysis offers a global perspective on how people with disabilities are represented as users, consumers, viewers, or listeners of new media, by policymakers, corporations, programmers, and the disabled themselves.