"A curious phenomenon"

Now ongoing, in New York City, NEUROfest, a series of theatre events (including plays, monologues, puppetry, a musical, and a full-length opera) on neurological topics (January 5-29); next month, in Liverpool, a one-day colloquium titled Autism and Representation, sponsored by the Association for Research in Popular Fictions (24 February), not to be confused with the Autism and Representation: Writing, Cognition, Disability conference at Case Western Reserve University last October. Then there's the publishing boom on autism topics, fiction and non-fiction, as described in a Guardian article last month by Sarah Adams, titled "A Curious Phenomenon," which asks, "So are we talking a whole new literary genre? Is autism the new crime fiction, the new chick lit, the new miscellany? Is there such a thing as 'spectrum publishing'?"

If the field of disability studies has given more attention to physical disability and less to cognitive disability in the past, it looks like that could be changing now. Hang on tight.