  Disability studies has steadily gained prominence over the past half century, moving expeditiously (at least in the United States) into the mainstream in historical and literary scholarship, but not so quickly in philosophy. In the former fields, the components of disability studies are (mainly) two. There are analyses of the real histories of individuals or groups of individuals with disabilities, and there also are readings of representations of disabled people as they appear in literature, cinema, and similar creative work. Integrated with the accounts of real or invented disabled people are interpretations of the social or cultural forces that shaped their lives (in the case of actual individuals with disabilities), or else that shaped their representations in texts, film, and similar symbolic media.