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Paper short abstract

Depictions of disability in narrative folklore stereotype and erase, with many representations of disability as a punishment or flaw. Scholars have studied the notion of the supercrip, someone empowered by their disability, as gendered in fairy tale, which this paper extends to contemporary legend.

Paper long abstract

Depictions of disability in narrative folklore stereotype and erase, with fairy tales and legends in particular offering many ableist representations: disability as a punishment or flaw. Disability theory offers several useful paradigms, including the notion of the supercrip, someone empowered by their disability, which is notable here as it rarely appears with women. This paper investigates the relationship between gender and the supercrip, attempting to ascertain some of the earliest instances of this figure in folk narrative by surveying fairy tales from canonical oral and literary traditions as well as American contemporary legends. While the notion has been taken up by some fairy-tale scholars (notably Schmiesing), it has not yet been applied to legend studies, and thus this paper will focus on contemporary legends from North America, featuring the bodies of characters infected with debilitating diseases or featuring prosthetic hooks for hands—both primarily men, thus cementing gendered associations with extraordinary bodies.

Tentative bibliography

Bennett, Gillian. Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease, and Death in Contemporary Legend. 1st ed., University Press of Mississippi, 2005.

Goldstein, Diane E. Once Upon a Virus: Aids Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception. Utah State University Press, 2004.

Grue, Jan. “Ablenationalists Assemble: On Disability in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 15 no. 1, 2021, p. 1-17.

Schalk, Sami. “Reevaluating the Supercrip.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, 2016, pp. 71–86.

Schmiesing, Ann. Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Wayne State University Press, 2014.