Call for Proposals
All in the Mind: Adaptations of Mental and Cognitive Disability in Popular Culture

Editors:
Whitney Hardin, Kettering University
Julia Kiernan, Kettering University

Historically, few nuanced depictions of mental health have existed in popular media. Most narratives frame mental and cognitive disability as a deficiency: “‘[b]roken brains’ ‘chemical imbalances’ and ‘disordered neuronal pathways’ are the widely used metaphorical frames that link mental difference to our bodies, our brains and our genes” (Lewis 1). Consequently, "disability studies, with its emphasis on the body and not the mind, creates fissures through which attention to the mentally disabled easily falls" (Prendergast 46). A glance at film and television supports these deficit models, which have served to demonize institutions (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, American Horror Story: Asylum), connect mental illness to violence (The Shining, Psycho, Donnie Darko), use illness in gimmicky ways (Fight Club; Me, Myself, & Irene; Atlanta), or position disability within the realms of comedy or romance (What About Bob?, The Fisher King, Splendor in the Grass, Garden State, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). Additionally, such representations often connect mental disability and issues of gender (Girl, Interrrupted; Silver Linings Playbook; Unsane), and have a tradition of confusing mental disability and nonconforming gender/sexuality (Silence of the Lambs). This by no means exhaustive list doesn’t include the ways mental disability is portrayed in other mediums, such as graphic novels, fan fiction, comics, video games, music, YouTube, etc, etc.

Remakes, reboots, and adaptations often function in popular media as an avenue of revitalization, a common tactic for breathing new life into tired narratives—bringing them up to date and making them accessible for contemporary audiences. For narratives of mental disability, such revitalization also provides an opportunity to more openly address and complicate questions of mental and cognitive health. Consequently, recognizing that “narrative choices” are “not simply rational or medical choices,” but “also ethical choices” (Lewis 1), this collection argues that contemporary media have a responsibility to consider and (potentially) take advantage of these opportunities as they recycle, rehash, and remix out-dated, existing narratives of mental and cognitive disability. To these ends, this collection examines how contemporary media has succeeded or failed to shift away from deficit-based biomedical models, which regularly disempower characters through expectations of definitive diagnosis and recovery. We welcome contributions that understand mental difference through “psychoanalytic, cognitive- behavioural, existential/humanist, family, social/- political, creative, spiritual and integrative models, to name a few” (Lewis 1). The editors are particularly interested in how reboots and remakes present narratives and characters’ experiences as palatable, relatable, and acceptable; particularly in light of audiences who embody increased knowledge, acceptance, and normalization of mental and cognitive disability. Chapters that examine how adaptations navigate past injustices, authenticate experience, and take up societal norms are encouraged.
This edited collection, intended as a volume for Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield’s Remakes, Reboots and Adaptations series, invites analysis from scholars working in areas such as interdisciplinary humanities, gender studies, race, sexuality, disability, cultural studies, fan studies, sociology, rhetoric, etc.
In particular, we are asking for proposed chapters that consider the following questions/issues:

Intersections between mental disability and gender/race/ethnicity/class/etc. 
Disability, culture, and identity
Issues of nostalgia in mental health 
Issues of recycling and stereotyping 
Mental health narratives and historical (in)accuracies
Challenging narratives which previously avoided, ignored, or dismissed mental disability
Adaptations that increase the presence of neurodiversity 
Disability in relation to comic studies 
Casting choices for narratives/characters with disability
Portrayals of mental disability in media for YA/children
Disability and classism in relation to superheroes
Disability and science-fiction or fantasy 
Disability as villainy 
Mental and cognitive disability in horror genres
The visibility/invisibility of mental disabilities 
Medical and social models of disability
Queering disability 
Mental health remakes/re-adaptations and the internet
Fandom and fan reactions to portrayals of mental disability
Ethics and deficit modeling in mental health
De-romanticization of mental and cognitive disability
Mental disability and addiction
Authentication of mental and cognitive disability

Deadline for Proposals: 500 word abstract and a 100 word bio are due 15 April 2020. Send as email attachments (preferably MS Word) with the subject line “All in the Mind Proposal” to Whitney Hardin ([log in to unmask]) and Julia Kiernan ([log in to unmask]). Inquiries are encouraged and welcome. Authors whose abstracts are provisionally accepted for inclusion will be notified by 5 July 2019.

Proposals Due: April 15, 2020
Provisional Acceptance: May 15, 2020
Manuscripts Due: December 15, 2020
Projected Publication: Summer 2021

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