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  • Editor’s Column
  • James Phelan

This issue has two distinct parts: (1) a section of two essays belonging to what I now think of as the paradoxical genre of "the traditional innovation" and (2) a cluster of essays exemplifying the interdisciplinarity of much current work in narrative studies. The "traditional" aspect of the first two essays is their general method of inquiry, a method that has not only repeatedly proven its mettle in our field but also seems fit for countless future inquiries. Both Katherine Saunders Nash in "Narrative Progression and Receptivity: John Cowper Powys's Glastonbury Romance" and Terence Murphy in "Monitored Speech: The 'Equivalence' Relation between Direct and Indirect Speech In Jane Austen and James Joyce" juxtapose existing theoretical wisdom with striking elements of individual narratives in order (a) to highlight the distinctiveness of those elements and (b) to extend, revise, or otherwise improve the received wisdom. More specifically, Nash invites us to see both Powys's novel and the relationship among narrative progression and the erotics of reading in a new way, while Murphy invites us to recognize the range of effects Joyce (in "The Dead") and Austen (in Emma) generate from their choices to use indirect rather than direct speech. Nash and Murphy are also traditional innovators in the sense that each is working on elements of narrative that traditional theory has found to be central: plot and progression in Nash's case, and narrative discourse, especially speech representation, in Murphy's.

The disciplines represented in the interdisciplinary cluster of essays are narrative studies, disability studies, and legal studies. All seven of these essays had their first incarnations in a symposium on Narrative, Disability, and the Law held at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in February 2006, sponsored by the OSU Center for Interdisciplinary Law and Policy Studies and the OSU Department of English. I would like to thank Peter M. Shane, Director of the CILPS and Valerie Lee, Chair of the English Department, for their intellectual and financial support of [End Page 1] the conference. I would also like to thank the entire committee that worked on the planning and logistics of the conference: Brenda Brueggemann, David Herman, Steven Kuusisto, and Amy Shuman from the OSU English Department; Ruth Colker and Sol Bermann from the Law School; Scott Lissner the ADA Coordinator on the OSU campus, and Ruth O'Brien of the Program in Political Science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The seven essays in this cluster do not follow a common pattern of argumentation. That's no surprise, since the authors come from different disciplines (literary studies, disability studies, linguistics, legal studies—with every author having a primary expertise in one discipline and at least a secondary interest in one or more of the others). Each author examines a particular issue or problem identified by the convergence of the three phenomena that form their common subject matter—narrative, disability, and the law—and each brings to the analysis his or her particular expertise within the relevant disciplines. The result is a rich set of findings, reflections, and speculations, ones that open up territory for further exploration by future interdisciplinary researchers. Robert Dinerstein in "'Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't It?': The Complex Role of Narratives in Disability Cases" focuses on narrative within the context of disability litigation, and he uses case studies to identify barriers to the effectiveness of narrative within the legal system as well as the potential of narrative for helping to expand the rights of people with disabilities. Susan Schweik in "Begging the Question: Disability, Mendicancy, Speech and the Law," develops a persuasive account of the connections between American attitudes toward the poor and American attitudes toward the disabled in her analysis of "unsightly beggar ordinances" and some legal challenges to them. Schweik notes that her own historical narrative offers insight into the way the American legal system still too often views people with disabilities as unsightly beggars. Thomas Couser in "Undoing Hardship: Life-Writing and Disability Law" examines the variety of relationships among personal narrative, cultural narrative, and the law, proposing a four item taxonomy. Personal narratives of disability may (1) anticipate changes...

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