Admit it, we've all stared at people before. Whether it was an intense stare, we got scolded for as curious kids or a (hopefully undetected) stare at someone who caught our eye in public.
But can a stare be political? For Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, it absolutely can be. Let's take a closer look (or stare ) at the biography and books of this leading voice in disability studies and activism.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: biography
Rosemary Garland-Thompson (also known as 'RGT') was born on 18 October 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA and currently lives in San Francisco.
Although RGT identifies as disabled from birth, she explains that she did not have a full understanding of what having a disabled identity meant to her until she went to university and learnt about critical theory and the history of the Disability Rights Movement.1
Critical theory: theory that aims to reflect on and critique society, including its cultures, social norms, and structures, often with the goals of identifying and challenging sources of oppression
Disability Rights Movement: a political movement that aims to identify and challenge ableism (discrimination against disabled people)
Education
RGT achieved a Bachelor's and Master's degree in English at the University of Nevada. In 1993, around the age of 47, RGT completed her postdoctorate in English at Brandeis University in Massachussessets. Later in her life, RGT received another Master's degree in Bioethics at Emory University in Georgia.
Bioethics: a field of academic study that explores ethical issues in scientific, technological, and medical research.
Career
Since being 21 years old, RGT has taught students of all levels of education, from primary school teaching to teaching at universities. RGT began her career as a professor in 1992 when she taught English at Howard University in Washington, DC.
Between 2002 and 2020, RGT returned to where she studied herself and worked as an Associate Professor of Women's Studies, a Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and a Professor of English at Emory University.
Since retiring in 2020, RGT has been an Emeritus Professor at the university, meaning that she remains affiliated with the university despite no longer working actively on campus.
As well as being a teacher, RGT became a bioethicist after completing her graduate degree in this field in 2019. This reflects her wish to bring her knowledge in the humanities to healthcare and medical science because 'it is healthcare as an institution where disability and disability policy and practice is generally carried out'.1
Humanities: branches of study that explore human society and culture through human beings' beliefs and creations, e.g., through the study of literature, language, history, philosophy, religion, and the arts.
Currently, RGT describes herself as:
a bioethicist, author, educator, humanities scholar, and thought leader in disability justice and culture.2
Fig 1 - The library at Emory University where Rosemary Garland-Thompson studied and taught
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: feminist disability studies
Rosemarie Garland-Thompson has been a significant voice in disability studies since it began to develop as a field of study around the 1990s, especially in her role in the evolution of feminist disability studies.
Disability studies: a broad field of academic study that evolved out of the disability rights movement and that examines the meaning of disability and the lived experiences of disabled people in society through a critical theory lens.
Feminist disability studies: a branch of disability studies that explores the lived experiences of being both disabled and a woman through a critical theory lens.
In 2002, RGT published an article called 'Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory'. The article argued that including disability studies within feminist theory would be beneficial for the feminist movement (and vice versa). In addition, RGT put forward feminist disability studies as an academic field in its own right.
In 2005, RGT expanded on this in her article 'Feminist Disability Studies'. The article solidified feminist disability studies by defining the field, exploring existing scholarship that could serve as its foundation, and outlining how the field could move forward.
Some of the many foundational names of feminist disability studies that RGT refers to include the poet and civil rights activist Audre Lord (1934–92), who also wrote heavily about illness and disability, and the author Nancy Mairs (1943–2016), a poet and author who wrote about her experience with multiple sclerosis.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: Extraordinary Bodies
Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability In American Culture and Literature (1997) is recognised as a canonical founding text in the field of disability studies. In Extraordinary Bodies, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson moves away from the idea of disability as a medical status and explores disabled people as a political minority and disability as a social and cultural phenomenon.
According to RGT, our ideas around disability don't usually reflect true experiences of actually living with a disability but instead mirror and enhance society's anxieties around what is considered 'normal' (or 'normate' in RGT's words) and what isn't. As a result, disability is often represented (in literature, for example) as abnormal or extraordinary, which has translated into the continued oppression of disabled people.
RGT relates this treatment of disabled bodies to the treatment of other bodies that are politicised for reasons including race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. One aim of Extraordinary Bodies, then, is:
to probe the relations among social identities – valued and devalued – outlined by our accepted hierarchies of embodiment (Chapter 1).
In other words, to question why some bodies are valued more than others.
Embodiment: when a non-physical thing is given a physical form, e.g., a soul in a human body.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: books
Over the course of Rosemarie Garland-Thompson's career, she has taken part in and hosted multiple interviews, podcasts, keynotes, and presentations. She has also written, published, and edited many essays, articles, and books.
Two more of RGT's books that have had a major impact on the field of disability studies include Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (1996) and Staring: How We Look (2009).
Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body
Edited by Rosemarie Garland Thompson, Freakery is an anthology of essays exploring the lasting legacy of freak shows and how they resulted from and continue to affect the way we think about disability and bodily differences.
Freak shows were a form of entertainment especially popular in the US and UK during the 19th century. Freak shows put humans and animals on display that were considered exotic or abnormal. Today, freak shows are unpopular and illegal in many places.
In the anthology, RGT writes that:
A freak show's cultural work is to make the physical particularity of the freak into a hypervisible text against which the viewer's indistinguishable body fades into a seemingly neutral . . . instrument of the autonomous will ('Introduction').
That's quite a mouthful, but what RGT means is that freak shows were so popular because they made onlookers feel more normal and in control as they stared at the people who were displayed as freaks.
Do you notice how RGT expanded on the ideas presented in Freakery in Extraordinary Bodies, which was published one year later?
A key idea in RGT's works is how representations of disability and treatments of disabled people reflect social and cultural anxieties around being perceived as 'normal'.
Staring: How We Look
Rosemary Garland-Thompson's 2009 book, Staring, zoomed even further into the relationship between bodies considered ordinary and extraordinary in society.
In the book, she explores an interaction that, to RGT, is a direct representation of this relationship: the stare. Staring is the first published book to explore this topic in depth.
In the book, RGT disagrees that staring is necessarily wrong, despite what we may have heard repeatedly from our parents when we were curious children. Instead, 'Staring is both simple and complex, both natural and cultural' (Part II).
RGT even looks at staring and being stared at as an encounter that has the potential to be productive and progressive rather than shameful and oppressive. This is because:
These encounters work to broaden collective expectations of who can and who should be seen in the public sphere and help create a richer and more diverse human community. This is what starees [people being stared at] can show us all (Part I).
How do you feel about staring and being stared at? What makes this encounter a positive or negative experience for you?
Fig. 2 - Rosemary Garland-Thompson asks who, how, why, and when we stare in her study on the act of staring.
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson: facts
There's lots to know about this groundbreaking figure in disability studies, so here are some more facts about Rosemary Garland-Thompson.
- In 2009, RGT was named one of the '50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World' by the Utne Reader, a digital magazine based in Kansas, USA.
- In 2010, RGT was awarded a Senior Scholar Award by the Society for Disability Studies, acknowledging her work at the forefront of the field.
- RGT became interested in society's conceptions of extraordinary bodies when she noticed the stares she was getting from students as a result of her disability.
- In 2016, RGT wrote the first article, titled 'Becoming Disabled', for the new New York Times 'Disability Column'. Since its debut, RGT has continued to contribute to the series and, in 2019, co-edited a collection of these articles in About US: Essays from the Disability Series.
Rosemarie Garland Thomson - Key takeaways
- Rosemary Garland-Thompson (also known as 'RGT') was born on 18 October 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Rosemary Garland-Thompson is a prominent disability studies scholar, disability activist, and bioethicist.
- Rosemary Garland-Thompson has had a large role in the development of feminist disability studies.
- Rosemary Garland-Thompson's book Extraordinary Bodies (1997) is recognised as a canonical founding text in disability studies.
- Throughout Rosemary Garland-Thompson's work, she explores the relationships between bodies considered ordinary and extraordinary in society, how this translates into oppression, and how we can rethink these relationships in order to challenge this oppression.
1 Rosemarie Garland-Thompson. 'The Future of Disability Studies: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Yomi S. Wrong'. UCLA Disability Studies. YouTube. 9 March 2022.
2 Rosemarie Garland-Thompson. 'About RGT'. Rosemary Garland Thompson. 2020.
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