Of historical representations of disabled people, disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson remarks, “[t]he history of disabled people in the Western world is in part the history of being on display, of being visually conspicuous while politically and socially erased.” The representational history of disabled people can be largely characterized as one of being put on display or hidden away. People living with disabilities have been, and continue to be, displayed in freak shows, medical journals, charity campaigns, and as evil or pitiable tropes in novels and films. At the same time, bodies of difference have been hidden in institutions and generally removed from public space. When looking at the contemporary representation of disability in the media, we can easily see that the problem is not that disabled bodies are absent; representations of disability are pervasive. The problem, rather, is the way that bodies of difference are represented. If we consider such representations as contributing to a public pedagogy which helps to shape our collective understanding of disability, then putting forth representations of disability created by disabled people is a matter of political importance.

Rice, C., & Chandler, E. (2019). Representing difference: Disability, digital storytelling, and public pedagogy. In K. Ellis, G. Goggin, B. Haller, & R. Curtis (Eds.), The Routledge companion to disability and media (pp. 377–387). Routledge.