Date of Award

Spring 2020

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Major

Neuroscience; LACS: World Literature and Culture Studies

First Advisor

Sara Kippur

Abstract

Disability studies is a growing field of research in the US, but has been slow to take root in countries with more conservative academic structures like France. In particular, representation of the experience of life with a disability is challenged when individuals face barriers of communication or stigma about their abilities. This paper looks specifically at works by and about Babouillec, a young French poet with autism classified by her doctors as “deficient by 80%”. In exploring the implications of her work, I evaluate the ways in which the mediation of her story by those around her (in the production of her story for publication, cinema, and theater), as well as my own critical position in narrating her story, influence the ways in which these works are received. How do we decide who is qualified to tell someone else’s story? More importantly, what kinds of mediated stories of disability are we receptive to?

Comments

Senior thesis completed at Trinity College for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and LACS: World Literature and Culture Studies.

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