Introduction: Decades On

Decades On is the fiftieth issue of what is now known as the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies (or JLCDS). The title of this extra special issue refers to the fact that now, in 2022, two decades have passed since the publication of a dozen books that underpinned the very conception of the journal:

• • Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness and The Body, Lennard J. Davis (1995)

• • Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (1996)

• • The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (1997)

• • The Disability Studies Reader, Lennard J. Davis (1997)

• • Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (1997)

• • Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability and Life-writing, G. Thomas Couser (1997)

• • Lend Me Your Ear: Rhetorical Constructions of Deafness, Brenda Jo Brueggemann (1999)

• • Sight Unseen, Georgina Kleege (1999)

• • Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse, David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (2000)

• • Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture, James C Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (2001)

• • Bending Over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism & Other Dfficult Positions, Lennard J. Davis (2002)

• • Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2002)

The content of these books provided a rich knowledge base on which JLCDS was built. Moreover, since 2006, when the journal was founded, all of the named authors and editors have given invaluable advice to the editorial board as have many of the chapter contributors who soon published their own monographs and edited volumes that are now similarly significant in the field.

Once the knowledge base and editorial board were established, the city of Liverpool proved key to the progress of JLCDS. A year before I entered into discussions about publishing with Liverpool University Press and a couple of years before I was lucky enough to find a job at Liverpool Hope University, the journal was launched at a conference hosted by Liverpool John Moores University. Organized by Irene Rose, Rebecca Mallett, and Claire Molloy, the event was held 26–27 May 2007, the weekend on which the first issue of the journal went live online, which was its sole format at the time. The event organizers kindly provided celebratory drinks and refreshments to mark the official launch and I gave a keynote presentation focused on the premise and prospects of the new journal. One of the other keynote speakers was George McKay, of whom I have been a fan ever since, and another was Lucy Burke, who contributed to the inaugural issue, guest edited a special issue a year later, and remains an important member of the editorial board to this day. Indeed, I also met Clare Barker, who subsequently joined the board, not to mention David Feeney, who presented at the event, published in the first print issue, and is now a close colleague. My point here is that from the foundation in 2006 to the inaugural issue in 2007 the journal had become a focal point on an international scale, as was demonstrable in hundreds of thousands of views from all continents, but the launch in Liverpool began to suggest possibilities for both a publisher and an institutional base.

When the journal was only available electronically, the open access approach was very popular and this level of interest caught the attention of quite a few publishers. One of the things that drew me to Liverpool University Press in particular was the publication of Stuart Murray's Representations series, which I helped to launch at an interdisciplinary event I organized with Dan Goodley and Lucy Burke at Manchester Metropolitan University. I signed a contract in 2008 and from 2009 the Journal of Literary Disability became the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, published three times per year in print and online formats, and part of the international collection Project MUSE. Thanks to all involved, especially the editorial board, the authors, the guest editors, the publishers, and of course the readers, after a decade the journal's progress culminated in the expansion to quarterly publication, followed by selection for international indexing by Scopus.

Another important...