Elizabeth J. Donaldson (she/her/hers) is professor of English and associate dean of curriculum and student engagement in the College of Arts and Sciences at New York Tech, where she teaches courses in bioethics and American literature and directs the minor in Medical Humanities. She has published essays on graphic medicine and mental illness; LSD-inspired disability-immersion experiences of schizophrenia; mental illness in film; antipsychiatry in Lauren Slater’s memoirs; and physiognomy and madness in Jane Eyre. She chaired the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession, and she is a Fellow in The Future of Disability Studies group at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference. She is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disabilities Studies and co-editor (with Catherine J. Prendergast) of the special issue, “Emotion and Disability” (2011). She co-edited the essay collection The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability (Ohio State University Press, 2012) and currently co-edits the Palgrave Macmillan book series Literary Disability Studies with David Bolt and Julia Miele Rodas. She edited a collection of essays, Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and is currently working on a monograph which focuses on psychiatry and American literature.
Recent Projects/Research
- “PsychoGraphics: Schizophrenia, Comics, Collaboration,” Stories of Illness/Disability in Literature and Comics conference, PathoGraphics Research Team, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, October 2017
- Co-Editor, Literary Disability Studies
Publications
- Editor, Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
- "Beyond A Beautiful Mind: Schizophrenia and Bioethics in the Classroom," Disability Studies Quarterly, special issue, “Interventions in Disability Studies Pedagogy,” 35.3 (Spring 2015).
- “Psychomimesis: LSD and Disability Immersion Experiences of Schizophrenia,” Disability Studies Quarterly, special issue, “Madness and Disability Studies,” Vol. 33.1 (January 2013).
- Co-Editor, The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability (Ohio State University Press, 2012).
Courses Taught at New York Tech
- Literature and Medicine
- American Nervousness: Mental Health and Madness in American Literature and Culture