Making Thought Visible: Essays on Neurodiversity on Television

For viewers who experience autism, bipolar disorder, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder or other cognitive variations, television storytelling offers opportunities to empathize with characters portraying neurodiversity. In this first collection of its kind, contributors analyze television’s increasing attempts to make thought--how individuals process the world around them--visible.

Examined themes include the muting of neurodiverse voices, madness as power, diagnosis vs. lived experience, dual diagnosis, reactions to ＂atypical＂ behaviors, the cultivation of attitudes towards autistic individuals, and translanguaging across global series. Programs include Young Sheldon, The Good Doctor, Legion, the Star Trek universe, Euphoria, True Detective, Girls, Bungo Stray Dogs, and Love on the Spectrum. Varied theoretical and methodological approaches and attention to the quality and verisimilitude of neurodiverse representations result in an appropriately complex analysis.

Curt Hersey is an associate professor and chair of the communication department at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. He has published articles in the Journal of Film and Video and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. Julie D. O’Reilly is a professor of communication and gender studies at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio. She has published articles in The Journal of American Culture and Clues: A Journal of Detection.