Is this editorial introduction what normal feels like? Over the past fifteen months we have used this space to explain why the journal had suspended operations, our plan to restore the journal to sustainability and deal with the backlog of submissions, our completed review of the backlog, and the reopening of the submissions portal. This is the first issue for which we have no major announcement. A return to normality, if we dare use that term, is welcome. We think it marks a milestone in the restoration of regular operations at Disability Studies Quarterly (knock on wood!).
There is no thematic focus for the four articles in this issue, though each of them begins with a disability studies analysis that leads to practical proscriptions for reform and liberation. The first article, from Eric Olund, brings a geographer's eye to the journal and examines strategies of spatial confinement that racially neurodivergent people confront. The article examines not only how neurodivergent people can be misfits but also how they can thrive in different spaces. We are excited about this piece partly because disability studies has much to gain by engaging more extensively with the discipline of geography, given that geography is so central to our modern understandings of disability.
The next article, by V. Sue Atkinson, Emily Danielson, and Olivia Rogers analyzes depictions of autism on television. While many media studies have examined portrayals of various physical, sensory, and psychiatric disabilities, this article fills a gap in that scholarship by focusing on the increasingly common depictions of autism in a broad range of television shows. It offers a useful assessment of the current state of portrayals of autism as well as a directive for how television shows need to become more realistic and less reliant on stereotypes.
Shifting to the COVID-19 crisis, Rebecca Monteleone's interviews twelve adults with intellectual/developmental disabilities to understand their experience during the pandemic. Her article reveals the mismatch between the needs and understandings of US adults with intellectual disabilities and the public health plans and social service provisions meant to serve them. Going beyond COVID-19, this article offers general guidance for how to reform support services to better serve disabled people's needs in times of crisis.
Finally, the article by Emily Abrams, Colleen Floyd, and Elisa Abes applies crip theory to the higher education experience. It examines the experiences and personal narratives of disabled undergraduate students, especially those with psychological and learning disabilities. After examining how ableism shapes these students' experiences, it uses crip theory tenets to offer remedies for creating liberatory access in higher education.
We hope you enjoy this issue and also remind you that SDS has a new Patreon site for paying the membership dues that help maintain this paywall-free, open access journal: https://www.patreon.com/SocietyforDisabilityStudies.
