David T. Mitchell
David T. Mitchell
Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies
Contact:
Phillips Hall, Room 607A
David T. Mitchell (born January 6, 1962) is an American disability studies professor. He has written several books and has also made films as a part of his academic research. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Mitchell currently resides in Washington, DC and Princeville, Kauai.
David T. Mitchell is a professor of English & Cultural Studies at George Washington University. He has published six (6) scholarly books in Disability Studies and is widely recognized as an international scholar of importance in the field. His co-edited collection (with Sharon Snyder), The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability (1997), was the first humanities-based collection of academic essays in the field. The influence of that collection led directly to appointment as a series co-editor of Corporealities: Discourses of Disability at the University of Michigan Press which has published more than 35 books under its brand to date.
In 2001, he co-authored, Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse, which forwarded a field-defining theory of disability representation that remains one of the most cited concepts in Disability Studies. His most recent publications include: Cultural Locations of Disability (2006), The Encyclopedia of Disability (2005), The Biopolitics of Disability (2015), The Matter of Disability (2019), and The Cultural History of Disability Vol 6: Disability in the Modern Age (2020). These works have extended the range of his expertise from literary, cultural, and film studies to political economics, disability history, climate change, animal studies and posthumanism. At the center of his work are questions of disability embodiment as providing alternative ethical maps of living. He is currently completing a new feature-length film with his son, Cameron S. Mitchell, on Nazi mass murders in psychiatric institutions titled, Disposable Humanity (TBA)
Books:
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (eds.). A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age: Volume 6. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2020, 224 pp.
David T. Mitchell and Susan Antebi (eds.). The Matter of Disability. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2019, 284 pp.
David T. Mitchell with Sharon L. Snyder. The Biopolitics of Disability: Neoliberalism, Ablenationalism, and Peripheral Embodiment. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2015, 193 pp.
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. Cultural Locations of Disability. Chicago: University of Chicago P, 2006, 283 pp.
Gary Albrecht, David T. Mitchell, & Sharon L. Snyder (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. 5 vols. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2005, 3, 200 pp. Senior Editor.
Gary Albrecht, Jerome Bichenback, David T. Mitchell, Walter Schalick, & Sharon L. Snyder (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability: A History of Disability in Primary Sources. Vol. 5. Thousand Oaks: Sage P, 2005, 800 pp. General Editor.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 2000, 320 pp.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder (Eds.). The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. The Body, In Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan P, 1997, 432 pp.
Book Chapters:
Mitchell, David T, and Sharon L. Snyder (2024). Chapter 3: “Names on Frosted Glass: From Fetishizing Perpetrator Mindsets to Disability Memorialization.” Sites of Conscience: Place, Memory, and the Project of Deinstitutionalization. E. Punzi & L. Steele (eds). Vancouver, CANADA, Pages 64-79.
Mitchell, David T, and Sharon L. Snyder.(2024). "Precarity and the Global Dispossession of Indigeneity through representations of Disability". Ecofeminism and Allied Issues. Eds. Dipanwita Pal and Prasun Banerjee. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 45-61.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Precarity and the Global Dispossession of Indigeneity through Representations of Disability.” In Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature. Miriam Fernández-Santiago and Cristina M. Gámez-Fernández (eds.). New York: Routledge, 2023, Jan, Pages 17-32.
Linda Ware, David T. Mitchell, and Sharon L. Snyder, "Of the Insubstantiality of 'Special' Worlds: Curricular Cripistemological Practices as Asset-Based Pedagogy In Teacher Education." In Sustaining Disabled Youth: Centering Disability in Asset Pedagogies, Frederico Waitoller and Kathleen King Thorius, Teachers College Press/Columbia University, 9780807767689, 2023 Jan, Pages 111-125
David T. Mitchell. “Disability Disruptions of Ablenationalism and the Promise of the Janus-Faced Nation.” In Homonationalism, Femonationalism and Ablenationalism: Critical Pedagogies Contextualized. Angeliki Sifaki, C L Quinan, Katarina Lončarevic (eds.). London: Routledge, 2022, 9-15.
David T. Mitchell. “Preface: On the Cusp of Medical Corporatization.” In Medical Maladies: Stories of Disease and Cure From Indian Languages. New Delhi: Nyogi Books, 2022, i-ix.
“Disability Cinema: Charting Alternative Ethical Maps on Film.” In Disability and Dissensus: Strategies of Disability Representation and Inclusion in Contemporary Culture. Katarzyna Ojrzyńska and Maciej Wieczorak (eds.). Leiden/Boston: Brill Academic Publishing, 2021, 69-84.
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder. “Chapter 15: Disability, Neo-Materialism, and the Biopolitics of the Project of Western Man: Toward a Posthumanist Disability Theory.” M.R. Thomsen & J. Wamberg [eds.]. Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2020, 197-214.
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder. “Introduction: What We Talk About When We Talk About Disability.” A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age. D. Mitchell & S. Snyder [Eds]. London: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2020, 1-18.
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder. “Chapter 10: Disability, Neoliberal Inclusionism and Non-Normative Positivism.” S. Dawes & M. Lenormand [eds.]. Neoliberalism in Context: Governance, Subjectivity and Knowledge. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 177-213.
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder. “Foreward to the New Edition.” H. Stiker. A History of Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019, vii-xvi.
David T. Mitchell and Sharon L.Snyder. “Minority Model: From Liberal to Neoliberal Futures of Disability.” N. Watson & S.Vemas [eds.]. Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies. London: Routledge, 2019, 45-54.
David T. Mitchell. “’Low-Level Agency’: Disability, Oppression, and Alternative Genres of the Human,” in K. Ellis, M. Kent, (eds.). Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2018: 189-199.
David T. Mitchell. “Afterword: Next Thing-ness,” in L. Ware (ed.). Critical Readings in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies. New York: Springer Publications, 2017 [forthcoming].
David T. Mitchell, Susan Antebi, & Sharon L. Snyder. “Introduction: The Matter of Disability.” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019: 1-36.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Posthumanist T4 Memory.” D. Mitchell, S. Antebi, S. Snyder [eds.]. The Matter of Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019: 249-272.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Accessing Alternative Ethical Maps of In(ter)dependent Living in Global Disability Documentary,” in C. Brylla and H. Hughes (eds.). Documentary and Disability. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017: 177-194.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Precarity and Cross-Species Identification: Autism, the Critique of Normative Cognition, and Nonspeciesism,” in S.J. Ray & J.C. Sibara (eds.). Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2017: 553-572.
David T. Mitchell. “Disability, Diversity, and Diversion: Normalization and Avoidance in Higher Education.” D. Bolt & C. Penketh (eds.). Avoidance in the Academy. New York: Routledge, 2016: 9-20.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. Translation of “Subnormal Nation: The Making of an International Eugenic Science.” S. YuWen, et. al. (eds.). Lingering Disabilities: A Reader for the 21st Century. Taiwan: ShenLou Press, 2015.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “The Politics of Atypicality: International Disability Film Festivals and the Fracturing of Identities,” in B. Fraser (ed.). Cultures of Representation: Disability in World Cinema. New York: Wallflower P, 2015: 18-32.
Refereed Journal Articles:
David T. Mitchell. “Gay Pasts and Disability Future(s) Tense: Heteronormative Trauma and Parasitism in Midnight Cowboy.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 8.1(2014): [forthcoming].
David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder & Linda Ware. "Educational Cripistemology, Or Every Child Left Behind." Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. (Summer 2012): [forthcoming].
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. “The Geo-Politics of Disability.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 4.2 (Summer 2010): 113-125.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Disability as Multitude: Re-working Non-Productive Labor Power.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 4-2 (Summer 2010):179-193.
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. “‘How Do We Get All These Disabilities in Here?:’ Disability Film Festivals as New Spaces of Collectivity.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 2008 (Spring): 11-29.
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. “Eugenics and the Racial Genome: Politics at the Molecular Level.” Patterns of Prejudice 40.4/5 (November), 2006: 399-412.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Masquerades of Impairment: Charity as a Confidence Game in Melville’s The Confidence-Man.” Leviathan 8.1 (March 2006): 35-60.
David T. Mitchell. “Compulsory Feral-ization: Institutionalizing Disability Studies.” PMLA 120.2 (2005): 627-634.
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. “Body, Genre, and the New Disability Documentary Cinema.” International Rehabilitation Review 54.1 Oct. 2004: xx-xxv.
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. “The Visual Foucauldian: Institutional Coercion and Surveillance in Fred Wiseman’s Multi-Handicapped Documentary Series,” The Journal of Medical Humanities. Issue 3-4 Winter 2003: 291-289.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “The Eugenic Atlantic: race, disability, and the making of an international Eugenic Science, 1800-1945.” Disability & Society 18.7 Dec. 2003: 843-864.
Michelle Jarman, Sharon Lamp, David T. Mitchell, Denise Nepveux, Nefertiti Nowell, and Sharon Snyder. “Theorizing Disability as Political Subjectivity: Work by the UIC Disability Collective on Political Subjectivities.” Disability and Society 17.5 July 2002: 555-570.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Disability Studies, Körper und das komplexe Feld der Identitäten.” [Ein Interview von Anja Tervooren]. Die Pholosophin. 13. Jahrgang, Heft 25, Juni 2002: 115-124.
Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell. “Out of the ashes of eugenics: diagnostic regimes in the United States and the making of a disability minority.” Patterns of Prejudice. Ed. Sander L. Gilman. 36.1 (2002): 79-103.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Re-engaging the Body: Disability Studies and the Resistance to Embodiment.” Public Culture. Ed. C. Breckenridge. 35.3 (fa112001): 367-90.
David T. Mitchell. ‘‘‘Too Much of a Cripple’: The Language of Prosthesis in Melville’s Moby-Dick.” Leviathan. 1.1 (March 2000): 3-17.
David T. Mitchell. “Of Cannibals and Tricksters: Images of Native Americans in American Culture.” Journal of Popular Culture 32.4 (Spring 1999): 101-118.
David T. Mitchell. “Fostering Disability Studies in the Academy.” Disability Studies Quarterly 19.1 (Winter 1999): 23-25.
David T. Mitchell. “Immigration and the Impossible Homeland in Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.” Antipodas: Journal of Spanish and Galician Studies X No. 10 (1998): 25-40.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Talking about Talking Back: Afterthoughts On the Making of the Disability Documentary, Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back.” Michigan Quarterly Review 37.2 (Spring 1998): 316-336.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Exploring Foundations: Languages of Disability, Identity, and Culture.” Disability Studies Quarterly 17.4 (Fall 1997): 231-237.
David T. Mitchell. “National Families and Familial Nations: Communista Americans in Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 15.1 (Winter, 1996): 51-60.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder, "A 'Stretchier' Kind of Witnessing: Turning Nazi Psychiatric Centers into Memorials.", Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, 2022 Aug, special 50th anniversary issue: "Decades On"
David T. Mitchell, "An Avalanche of Cultural Rejections: Black, Disabled, and Gay Exclusions and the Seduction of Shame", English Language Notes, 2022 Dec, Page 180-190
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “A ‘Stretchier’ Kind of Witnessing: Turning Nazi Psychatric Killing Centers into Memorials.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies 16(3): 317-337. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.
David T. Mitchell. “Where Are You Taking Us?: A Response to Jan Grue’s “Against Disability, Against Animality, Against Humanity. On the Transhumanist Imaginary and the Immanence of Meaning.” New Literary History Special Issue on Transhumanism: Ed. M. Lunblad. 51.4(Autumn 2020): 825-833.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Room for (Materiality’s) Maneuver: Reading the Oppositional in Guillermo del Torrez’s The Shape of Water.” JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 58.4 (Summer 2019): 150-156.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Memorializing Disability: Contemplating Less Capacitated Alternative Citizenries.” Parallax 23.4 (2017): 421-434. DOI: 10.1080/13534645.2017.1374512.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “The Matter of Disability.” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (2016). DOI:10.1007/s11673-016-9740-2.
David T. Mitchell, Sharon L. Snyder & Linda Ware. "Curricular Cripistemologies, Or Every Child Left Behind." Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 8.3 (2014): 301-319.
Review Articles:
David T. Mitchell. “Institutionalization as ‘Alternative Lifestyle.'”
David T. Mitchell. “Unexpected Adaptations: disability and evolution.” Disability & Society 18.5 (2003): 691-696.
David T. Mitchell. “Body Solitaire: The Singular Subject of Disability Autobiography.” American Quarterly 52.2 (June 2000): 311-315.
David T. Mitchell. “Invisible Bodies and the Corporeality of Difference.” Review Essay of The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Disability in the Movies, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, and Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. The Minnesota Review 48 (Fall 1997): 98-108.
David T. Mitchell. “Depathologizing the Medicalized Body.” Rev. of The Normal and the Pathological. Disability Studies Quarterly (Winter, 1997): 34-35.
David T. Mitchell. “Prosthesis as the Language of Metaphor.” Rev. of Prosthesis. Disability Studies Quarterly (Summer, 1997): 22-23
David T. Mitchell. “Book Review: Melvyn, Conroy. Nazi Eugenics: Precursors, Policy, Aftermath. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2017. Pp, 490.” American Literary History Series XVIII (March 11, 2019): https://academic.oup.com/alh/
David T. Mitchell. “Beyond Narrative Prosthesis: A Review of Sami Schalk’s Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 13.4 (2019): 486-490.
David T. Mitchell. “Word Made Flesh: A Review of Asma Abbas’s Liberalism and Suffering: Materialist Reflections on Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics and Alexander Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 11.2 (2017): 229-232.
David T. Mitchell. “Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race by Ellen Samuels.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 10.3 (2016): 367-369.
David T. Mitchell. “Terms of Impairment: A Review of Jacques Ranciere’s Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics.” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 9.3 (2015): 313-329.
David T. Mitchell. Review of Nirmala Erevelles’ Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 7.3 (2013): 349-356.
Encyclopedia Entries:
David T. Mitchell. “Dart, Justin.” G. Albrecht, 1. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 343.
David T. Mitchell & Carrie Sandahl. “Documentary Film.” G. Albrecht, 1. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 515-517.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Eugenics.” G. Albrecht, 1. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 624-625.
David T. Mitchell. “Evolutionary Theory.” G. Albrecht, 1. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 641-644.
David T. Mitchell. “Dorothea Lange.” G. Albrecht, 1. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1018.
David T. Mitchell. “Lavater, Johann Kaspar.” G. Albrecht, 1. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1029.
David T. Mitchell. “Murphy, Robert Francis.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1119.
David T. Mitchell. “Mutation Theory.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1125-1126.
David T. Mitchell. “O’Connor, Flannery.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 117-1178.
David T. Mitchell. “Racism.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1345-1347.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Representations of Disability, History of.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P,2006: 1382-1394.
David T. Mitchell. “Saint Vitus’ Dance.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1425.
David T. Mitchell. “Witchcraft.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: 1639-1641.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Toward a History of Disability in Primary Sources.” G. Albrecht, J. Bickenbach, D. Mitchell, W. Schalick, S. Snyder (eds.). Encyclopedia of Disability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage P, 2006: xliii-xlvii.
Other Articles:
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “Disability and Its Detractors: Lessons from Frida Kahlo.” The San Francisco Chronicle. Sept. 2000. Co-author.
David T. Mitchell. “The Frontier That Never Ends.” The Ragged Edge. Jan-Feb 1997.
David T. Mitchell. “Creating a More Accessible MLA,” (with Sharon Snyder) MLA Newsletter 28.3 (Fall, 1996): 8-9.
David T. Mitchell & Sharon L. Snyder. “The Status of Disability Studies in the Humanities.” The DSDG Newsletter 1 (January, 1995): 2-4.