Description: Embedded in film studies and neurodiversity scholarship, this open access book challenges the widespread idea that autism is an epidemic characterised predominantly by a deficit of empathy, arguing that the reverse is true: we are living through an empathy epidemic in which autism is the outcast.
Brief description: Janet Harbord is Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. She is the author of several books on film and philosophies of the moving image, including Chris Marker: La Jetée (2009), The Evolution of Film (2006) and Film Cultures (2002). She is the recipient of grants from the AHRC, EPSRC and the Leverhulme Trust.
Review Quotes:
"A complex and ambitious volume." --CHOICE
"Beginning with an autistic perspective, Harbord refuses normative notions of the social, proposing forms and forces of sociality that are radically expanded through autistic life. This work will be very important to the growing milieu of critical autism studies." --Erin Manning, University Research Chair in Relational Art and Philosophy in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Canada "This is an excellent book, representing a new and vital intervention in autism studies. It is timely in its focus and addresses a gap in the current scholarly literature." --Julia Miele Rodas, Professor of English, Bronx Community College & the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA