Invitation to Submit Papers

Curator: The Museum Journal

Special Issue on Museums and People with Disabilities

In areas as varied as transportation, housing, food service, employment, and cultural institutions, our interactions with people with disabilities are changing in fundamental ways. These changes appear to be driven in part by the much-discussed proliferation and democratization of technology and in part by the less obvious shifts in the sensibilities and assumptions of people at the start of the twenty-first century society.

How are museums and other cultural institutions adapting to-and helping shape-these cultural changes? The editors of Curator: The Museum Journal invite scholars and professionals within and outside of the museum community to submit articles and think-pieces that situate the theory and practice of informal settings in contemporary cultural modes. We seek fresh examples, research findings, and commentary that will illuminate what engagement with people with disabilities means today, how museums and other cultural organizations and programs are fostering a blurring of the lines between engagement with people with and without disabilities, and where current trends may take us.

We're particularly interested in papers that explore the broad landscape of engagement and communication. While a robust and rigorous foundation for engagement and equality has been established in the last decade or so, a fresh look is called for that takes direct account of the contemporary characteristics of communication and participation. We invite holistic, appropriately skeptical appraisals of the ways engagement with people with disabilities may be embedded in a broader set of experiences and outcomes intended by museums and other cultural settings.

We are also interested in book, media, and digital reviews relevant to these questions.

Inquiries and submissions should be sent to guest editors Christine Reich (creich@mos.org<mailto:creich@mos.org>) and Anna Lindgren-Streicher (alstreicher@mos.org<mailto:alstreicher@mos.org>), with copies of Zahava Doering, Editor at editor@curatorjournal.org<mailto:editor@curatorjournal.org>. Submissions should follow Curator's standard guidelines, which can be found at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)2151-6952/homepage/ForAuthors.html.

Articles that do not require review will be due on February 15th, 2013. Research articles that will require review will be due on February 1st, 2013.