Full-Time Faculty

Robert McRuer
Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995

Robert McRuer’s work focuses on queer and crip cultural studies and critical theory. He is currently beginning a project on Marxism and disability, considering locations of disability within contemporary political economies and the roles that disabled movements play in countering neoliberalism and hegemonic forms of globalization. His first book centered on contemporary lgbt writers, particularly lgbt writers of color, and his most recent book attends to cultural sites where critical queerness and disability contest heteronormativity and compulsory able-bodiedness.

Books:

Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. Cultural Front Series. New York and London: New York University Press, 2006.

The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities. New York and London: New York University Press, 1997.

 Other Publications:

Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies. Special Double Issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Guest Editor with Abby L. Wilkerson. Volume 9, Numbers 1-2. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Winner of the 2003 Best Special Issue Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ).

 “Queer America.” The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture. Ed. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 215-234.

“ We Were Never Identified: Feminism, Queer Theory, and a Disabled World.” Special Issue on Disability and History. Ed. David Serlin. Radical History Review 94 (2006): 148-154.

“Crip Eye for the Normate Guy: Queer Theory and the Disciplining of Disability Studies.” Special Cluster on “Disability Studies and the University.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 120.2 (2005): 586-592.

“Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence.” Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. Ed. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Sharon L. Snyder. New York: MLA Publications, 2002. 88-99. Reprinted in The Disability Studies Reader. 2 nd ed. Ed. Lennard J. Davis. New York: Routledge, 2006. 301-308.