You will, no doubt, note the disconnection between the date of the issue (October 2014) and the date of publication (late December or early January). I do wish to begin by apologizing for the length of time it has taken to get this issue out. It is simply a product of a kind of perfect storm of conflicting fall scholarly and professional schedules for the editorial and production teams, and to have tried to rush it out to meet our usual timely deadlines would have meant doing a disservice to the fine writers who have contributed to the issue. The January 2015 will, I promise, come out closer to that date.
But what I would prefer to emphasize are the myriad offerings in this issue, ranging from Debanuj DasGupta's hybridic lead article, combining personal narrative, autoethnography, and cultural analysis to the set of literary-critical essays to side-by-side articles on disability and rap and applications of contemporary philosophy to disability in the Humanities and Fine Arts section. Similarly, the Social Science and Applied Research contains works by noted legal scholars, cross-cultural theorists, and critical social psychologists. It's a pleasure to include Brent Carlson Elder's creative piece, grounded in his own work of witnessing and advocacy, and to see a robust return of the Books and Media Reviews section, including a review of a recent book and a consideration of the recent film adaptation of a classic book for young readers, profitably understood through the lenses of disability.
The January 2015 issue will also be a general one, followed by two topical special issues, one on disability and pedagogy guest-coedited by Liat Ben-Moshe, Jim Ferris, and Kim Nielsen, and the July issue, marking the 25th Anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, guest-edited by Richard Scotch.
Once again, I wish to thank Melanie Schlosser of The Ohio State University, who has done an indefatigable job in maintaining the production work for the journal, Julie-Ann Scott, Associate Editor, who has worked hard to supervise the reviews of manuscripts in Social Sciences and Applied Research, and all those, both on the Editorial Board and those who simply were willing to take on requests, whose work made the issue possible.
Bruce Henderson