Engaging Minds: Cognitive Disability and American Storytelling, 1899-1953

Characters with cognitive differences appeared in literary fiction long before the clinical awakening to neurodivergence; and so, their creators were tasked with depicting them without contemporary classifications or labels. These writers responded to questions that authors of disability literature continue to face today. How and to what extent should disabled cognition show up on the page? When does imaginative attention become creative exploitation? From the late nineteenth to the mid-twe...