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Acknowledgments What a thrill it is for me to have this book published. For my work to become part of the field-defining Corporealities series is a great honor indeed. But after only a moment of pondering this prospect and bearing the unavoidable pride, I am struck by the sheer number of people to whom I am indebted. This list of acknowledgments is therefore long and yet surely incomplete—for which I apologize in advance. Most obviously, David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, LeAnn Fields, Alexa Ducsay, Marcia LaBrenz, the anonymous reviewers, and everyone at the University of Michigan Press must be thanked for their part in making my ideas a reality. Given that a working version of chapter 1 has already been published as “Community, Controversy, and Compromise: The Language of Visual Impairment,” in Paul McPherron and Vaidehi Ramanathan’s Language, Bodies, and Health (2011), I must thank the publisher, Mouton de Gruyter, for permission to include that material in the present book. Like anyone working in our field, I owe much to the dedicated academics and activists involved with the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, including Clare Barker, Tammy Berberi, James Berger, Michael Bérubé, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Lucy Burke, Simone Chess, Johnson Cheu, G. Thomas Couser, Michael Davidson, Lennard Davis, Helen Deutsch, Elizabeth Donaldson, Jim Ferris, Anne Finger, Maria Frawley, Chris Gabbard, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Martin Halliwell, Diane Price Herndl, Martha Stoddard Holmes, Richard Ingram, Jennifer James, Alison Kafer, Deborah Kent, Georgina Kleege, Miriamne Ara Krummel, Fiona Kumari Campbell, Petra Kuppers, Stephen Kuusisto, viii • acknowledgments Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, Robert McRuer, Madonne Miner, Mark Mossman , Stuart Murray, Felicity Nussbaum, James Overboe, Catherine Prendergast , Ato Quayson, Julia Miele Rodas, Ellen Samuels, Carrie Sandahl, Susan Schweik, David Serlin, Tobin Siebers, Anne Waldschmidt, James Wilson, and the rest of the editorial board, as well as the authors, loyal readers, and everyone at Liverpool University Press. During the writing of this book I have also benefited from the work of my colleagues in the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies and the International Network of Literary and Cultural Disability Scholars, especially Owen Barden, Emmeline Burdett, Ria Cheyne, Liz Crow, David Doat, Pauline Eyre, Alice Hall, Alan Hodkinson, Claire Molloy, Marie O’Connor, Claire Penketh, Irene Rose, Will Southwell-Wright, Alex Tankard , and Laura Waite. In addition, in recent years I have been lucky enough to work with, and thus learn from, Chris Atkin, Philip Bamber, Len Barton, Wendy Bignold, Peter Clough, Siobhan Garber, Dan Goodley, Elizabeth Green, Ann-Marie Jones, Essaka Joshua, Chris Lowry, Daniela Mangione, Bart McGettrick, Susannah Mintz, Kenneth Newport, Tessa Owens, Gerald Pillay, Shirley Potts, Alan Roulstone, Carol Thomas, Margaret Rose Torrell , Joan Walton, Nick Watson, and June Wilson. I am eternally grateful for my undergraduate and postgraduate education at the University of Staffordshire, which was facilitated by literary and cultural scholars such as David Alderson, Aidan Arrowsmith, Christine Gledhill, Azzedine Haddour, Peter Heaney, Siobhan Holland, Edward Larrissy, Andrew Lawson, Susan McPherson, Martin McQuillen, Ann Parry, Laura Peters, Shaun Richards, and Barry Taylor. From my undergraduate days to the present time I have put my trust in, and depended on, a select number of support workers—namely, Tom Coogan, Sarah Cooper, Heather Cunningham, Jane Goetzee, and Pippa Leddra. They have all become good friends whose advice has often been invaluable. My oldest friends, Pete and Julie Bagnall, David Cuddy, and Kim Edge, as well as Chris Pearce, deserve a mention if not a medal for joining me so often in a much-needed beer at increasingly short notice and for tolerating my repetitious jukebox selections—long may it continue. Finally, my family has always been supportive in all of my writing. Thanks to them I have come to believe that not one of my big ideas is too big and that in any case failure is just a change of direction. They should all be thanked, but especially my mum, dad, brother Steve, sister-in-law Gerry, and above all, my daughter Nisha. ...

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