Stern, MichaelYeomans, Kaitlin2021-04-272021-04-272021-04-27https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26164This thesis seeks to explore how authors with disability create knowledge about the experience of disability that differs from cultural perceptions of disability. This thesis also utilizes autofictional narratives as a distinct phenomenon of disability that straddles the divide between fiction and autobiography. Utilizing critical disability studies as well as traditional literary studies as frameworks, I analyze how the author and the figure in autofiction create a literary identity that resonates back to the experience of the author with emphasis on disability. I examine the German narrative Psychocalypse oder das Warten auf Fu and the American narrative Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Often metaphorized in fiction, disability becomes a source of epistemology in autofiction as the authors represent themselves rather than being represented by others and as others.en-USAll Rights Reserved.Electronic Thesis or Dissertation