Robert McRuer

Abstract is: Robert McRuer (born 1966) is an American theorist who has contributed to fields in transnational queer and disability studies. McRuer is known as being one of the founding scholars involved in forming the field of queer disability studies, particularly for a theoretical outlook known as crip theory. He is currently professor of English at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. McRuer received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1995, advised by Michael Bérubé. His books include The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities and : Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. McRuer has also edited Sex and Disability, with Anna Mollow, and Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies, with Abby L. Wilkerson. McRuer’s work focuses on queer and crip cultural studies and critical theory. In 2018, NYU Press published McRuer's Crip Times: Essays on Disability, Sexuality, and Neoliberalism, a work considering locations of disability within contemporary political economies and the roles that disabled movements and representations play in countering hegemonic forms of globalization. His first book centered on contemporary LGBT writers, particularly LGBT writers of color, and his 2018 book attends to cultural sites where critical queerness and disability contest heteronormativity and compulsory able-bodiedness.