In Spring 2025, four members of the UCLA Department of Musicology—Raymond Knapp, Jessica Schwartz, Jenny Johnson, and Holley Replogle-Wong—embarked on a conference tour with a panel about disability in a handful of Disney animated musicals. Since then, the group has moved to propose an edited volume, and recruited 20+ additional authors. Throughout the 2026-27 Academic Year, a series of public and classroom-oriented working-group panels will workshop the edited volume toward its path to publication.

The collection of essays will examine music’s role in a variety of treatments of disability, and from a variety of perspectives, in Disney’s animated narrative musicals, beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and continuing through Encanto (2021) and Hoppers (2026). The essays will include contributions from scholars in various stages of their careers—from graduate students to faculty who are near-retirement, as well as academics not affiliated with a university—and from various disciplines, including childhood studies, disability studies, LGBTQ+ and gender studies, media studies, music theory, musical composition, musicology, and theater studies.

The book is intended as a scholarly volume useful to researchers, teachers, and students. The authors are encouraged to make their writing scholarly and accessible to undergraduates, including those not majoring in any of the noted relevant fields.

This webpage will document the working group activities. Any public events or roundtable discussion invitations will also be shared on this page.

Timeline

Summer 2026: Editors organize the authors into working-group panels according to topic and schedule
Late Summer/Early Fall 2026: Zoom orientation meeting with authors
Fall 2026: One public event (hybrid, in the Green Room or other classroom space)
Fall 2026: Two classroom events (one hybrid, in Dr. Knapp’s M112: Disability and Music-Dramatic Arts class, one online in Dr. Schwartz’s 191G: Music, Medicine, Culture seminar)
Winter 2027: One public event (hybrid, in the Green Room or other classroom space)
Winter 2027: One classroom event (TBD)
Spring 2027: One public event (hybrid, in the Green Room or other classroom space)
Spring 2027: One classroom event (hybrid, in Dr. Replogle-Wong’s 60: The American Musical class)