David T. Mitchell is Director of the PhD Program in Disability Studies in the College of Applied Health Sciences and Associate Professor of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois - Chicago. His books include Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (co-authored with Sharon L. Snyder), the first edited collection on disability studies in the humanities, The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, and a new book project, The Cultural Locations of Disability. He is also the director of disability documentaries including World Without Bodies (2002) and Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back, Grand Prize Winner of Rehabilitation International's Film Festival in Aukland, New Zealand. His essays on disability studies, disability criticism, and cultural studies have appeared in numerous journals. He is former president of the Society for Disability Studies and a founding member and chair of the Modern Language Association's Committee on Disability Issues and Disability Studies Discussion Group. http://www.uic.edu/depts/idhd/DS/neh/

Research Interests

Research Interests include the narrative and cultural study of disability; histories of disability; disability as a political subjectivity (the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, national identity, and disability); diagnostic labels and affiliations across kinds of disabilities; curriculum development for disability studies; representations of disabilities in film and media; eugenics and the history of institutions, including the development of a bifurcation between regular education and special education in the U.S.

Teaching Interests

Teaching includes the following courses: Visualizing the Body; Graduate Seminar in Disability Studies; Foundations of Disability and Human Development; Disability and Culture: Race, Gender, and Sexuality; Disability Documentary Video Production; A Representational History of Disability; A History of Human Difference - Disability Minorities in America; and Disability as Political Subjectivity. An article written by the course participants in Disability as Political Subjectivity appears in the Summer 2002 issue of Disability and Society.