bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Admission: Madness and (Be)coming Out Within and Through Spaces of Confinement
Authors: Eisenhauer Jennifer
Published: March 2016

This article examines, through a performative narrative, an installation artwork that I created in May 2008 titled Admission. This artwork and reflective writing embodies a form of creative inquiry into issues surrounding and the intersections of (be)coming out, nonvisible disabilities, and representations of mental illness. Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of becoming and the rhizome inform my investigation into (be)coming out, not as an event thought of as a singular moment defined through a fixed notion of the subject, but as an ongoing process of creating connections between subjects understood as multiplicities. In its conclusions, this article proposes that the kind of inquiry characteristic of artmaking can offer unique opportunities for understanding the complexities of the intersections of subjectivity and (be)coming out as a person with a mental illness
Gimp, Artistic Director Heidi Latsky, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, April, 2009
Authors: Chenoweth Ellen
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Commentary 2
Authors: Strauss Alan
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Figures
Authors: Cushing Pamela , Smith Tyler
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Calls for Papers and Announcements
Authors: Brueggemann Brenda , Danforth Scot
Published: March 2016

no abstract available
Negotiating Local Knowledge II: Kiswahili and Attitudes toward Disability
Authors: Waliaula Ken Walibora
Published: March 2016

no abstract available
The Right to Work: A Strategy For Addressing the Invisibility of Persons With Disability
Authors: Tororei S K
Published: March 2016

no abstract available
Reflections on the Disability, Culture, and Human Rights Workshop
Authors: Mutunga Willy
Published: March 2016

no abstract available
Disability and the Characterization of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew
Authors: Hile Rachel E.
Published: March 2016

Despite numerous studies of the origins and meanings of Katherine’s shrewishness in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, no scholar has analyzed the role of disability in Katherine’s feelings of alienation and her ultimate transformation.  In the wooing scene, we learn by indirection that Katherine has a limp through the references to the way she walks.  This article analyzes the references to Katherine’s limp in adaptations of the play during the 17th and 18th centuries, considering the significance of retaining these references even when stage productions of the plays have not included representation of a disabled Katherine.  The article then discusses the ways that visual representation of a disabled Katherine in performance might affect interpretations of the meaning of the play, including attention to a 2008 production of the play in which the actress playing Katherine performed the role with a limp. Keywords: William Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Katherine, mobility impairment, ugliness, marriage, disability.
"Fluster’d with flowing cups": Alcoholism, Humoralism, and the Prosthetic Narrative in Othello
Authors: Wood David Houston
Published: March 2016

This essay examines William Shakespeare’s Othello as an example of early modern narrative prosthesis. Rather than look to visual markers of difference and abnormality upon which claims of narrative prosthesis frequently rely, the essay examines the way Othello presents such difference and abnormality as an inward aspect of the psychosomatic construction of the humoral self. Drawing upon classical, medieval, and early modern views that correlate a medical relationship between wine and the black bile of humoral melancholy, the essay engages Shakespeare’s numerous representations of drunkenness, especially Hamlet’s formulation (in the context of his uncle, Claudius) of the disease-model of drunkenness we today term alcoholism. The essay then turns to Othello to explore how Shakespeare’s representation of Michael Cassio’s alcoholic “infirmity” serves as both a characterological and narrative prosthetic model for Othello’s propensity to jealous rage that Iago both manipulates and confounds.     Keywords: Shakespeare, Othello, disability, Michael Cassio, adustion, alcoholism, drunkenness, melancholy
"Gotta Go Now": Rethinking the Use of the Mighty and Simon Birch
Authors: Arndt Katrina , White Julia M. , Chervenak Andrea
Published: March 2016

Critical film analysis in the context of disability studies is introduced, and implications of disability portrayals in film are discussed. Two films often used in middle school classrooms, Simon Birch and The Mighty,  are introduced and briefly summarized. The films are critiqued using Norden’s conceptualizations of stereotypic roles for characters with disabilities including the "sweet innocent" and "comic misadventurer." Finally, the importance of critical screening is outlined and ways that teachers can use these films in ways that are respectful of people with disabilities based on criteria developed by Safran (2000) are offered.
What is the Color Green
Authors: Ferris Jim
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Communicate with Me
Authors: Savarese DJ
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Up in the Clouds and Down in the Valley: My Richness and Yours
Authors: Baggs Amanda
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Sexual Abuse of Children with Autism: Factors that Increase Risk and Interfere with Recognition of Abuse
Authors: Edelson Meredyth Goldberg
Published: March 2016

Two main arguments are made with regard to children with autism and risk for sexual abuse. First, some children with autism may be targeted for abuse by sexual offenders who may view them as vulnerable children. Second, when children with autism are sexually abused, they may show this in ways that get ignored or misattributed to autism rather than to possible sexual abuse. Because of these two issues, there need to be reliable methods established for determining whether or not a child on the autism spectrum has been sexually abused, and these protocols need to be informed by the challenges encountered by individuals with autism, voiced by those along the spectrum as well as by researchers in the autism field. Keywords: Autism, Autism Spectrum Disorders, sexual abuse
Rethinking Autism: Implications of Sensory and Movement Differences
Authors: Donnellan Anne M. , Hill David A. , Leary Martha R.
Published: March 2016

Descriptions of autism in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of the APA and throughout much of the history of autism emphasize difficulties in social interaction, communication and imaginative play. Recent reports by self-advocates, neuroscientists and other researchers suggest that sensory movement differences may play a significant part in the lives of those who live with autism. Sensory movement differences may include difficulties in starting, stopping, continuing, combining and switching motor action, speech, thought, memory and emotion. A review of these reports, the experience of those with other movement differences, and implications for understanding individuals with autism are presented. Suggestions are included on how knowledge of sensory movement differences may offer guidance in rethinking assumptions about autism characteristics, social interactions, communication and other supports.  KEYWORDS: Autism, Movement Differences, Movement Disorders, Sensory-Movement Differences
Neurodiversity and Caregiving: A Roundtable with Parents and Siblings of Children with Autism
Authors: Savarese Ralph James
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Circle Wars: Reshaping the Typical Autism Essay
Authors: Yergeau Melanie
Published: March 2016

This piece investigates “typical autism essays” and their rhetorical commonplaces, their largely neurotypical discourse conventions. In the field of rhetoric and composition, circular metaphors in discourse community theory resemble popular representations of autism as a low-functioning/high-functioning binary. Each field-specific conversation attempts to define groups of people (student writers, autistics) as though there are hard and fast boundaries to one’s identity. I posit that typical autism essays obscure issues of power as well as their neurotypically-defined genre conventions, effectively denying autistic self-advocates a place in the conversations that concern them.  Keywords:Autism; autistics; circles; cognitivism; discourse communities; essays; genre theory; neurodiversity; neurotypicality; rhetoric and composition; spectrum
Beyond Calculus: Apple-apple-apple-ike and Other Embodied Pleasures for a Child Diagnosed with Autism in a Sensory Integration Based Clinic
Authors: Park Melissa
Published: March 2016

Models of disability shift attention to how institutionalized forms of misrecognition are as debilitating as disease processes or diagnostic categories. Drawing from an ethnography of clinical practice, this article focuses on the poetic process—visible in fleeting, bodily-sensing images, gestures or nonsensical utterances like “apple-apple-ike”—that structures the interactions between a child diagnosed with autism and an occupational therapist. Microanalysis of moments of bodily attunement reveal how the emergence of embodied pleasures leads to a mutual healing of regard; that is, how techniques of bodily-sensing interventions work equally to restore the health of social relatedness. The tight entanglement between intercorporeality and intersubjectivity—embodied pleasure and recognition of the Other—foregrounds that the healing of regard must be mutual. Reframing rehabilitation research in terms of aesthetics and folk neurology considers what is at stake in developing a language to grasp what constitutes evidence of healing beyond a calculus of discrete, measureable outcomes. [Keywords: aesthetics, clinical reasoning, intersubjectivity, occupational therapy, recognition]
What We Have to Tell You: A Roundtable with Self-Advocates from AutCom
Authors: Savarese Emily Thornton
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Privilege and the Avoidance of Stigma
Authors: Hale Chris
Published: March 2016

This ethnographic case study examines a privileged family’s expression of the discursive phenomena of learning disabilities (LD) as described by Christine Sleeter in her seminal article Why is There Learning Disabilities? The author explores enactments of ideological perspectives on the significance of effort, intelligence, LD, and privilege with regards to one child’s academic success in the context of his elite private school. The central data within this paper is a portion of conversation among the research participants, the privileged parents of a child purported to have LD, and the researcher. The main speaker is the wife and mother, who weaves a narrative based on her perception of events that occurred during her son’s first grade experience at school. The purpose of her narrative is to refute the teachers’ expressed assumptions that her son’s academic difficulties are due to a lack of effort and/or commitment to his education. Her narrative is an object of analysis, used with phenomenological data sources that provide opportunities to examine the interactions and transactions embedded within the conversation. The theories of Pierre Bourdieu provide an important theoretical lens through which enactments of the reproduction of class privilege are framed. Sleeter’s exposition of the class-inscribed roots of LD discourse provides socio-historic context to the analysis presented here.
Some Thoughts From a “Minority” Mother on Overrepresentation in Special Education
Authors: Lavine Jasmine
Published: March 2016

In this article the author, a “minority” mother, shares her observations on a special education system that appears to provide significantly different opportunities to children depending on their socioeconomic status and racial group. Culling from her own experience in challenging the disability “diagnosis” of her son and his subsequent segregated placement, and the refusal of services she requested, the author speculates upon the rampant inequities that pervade special education practices. In response, the urges the need for a genuine dialogue with school personnel where race and socioeconomic status are not held against “minority” parents who seek a fair evaluation of their children and equal access to educational resources.
Exploring the Construction/Deconstruction of Learning Disabilities in an Urban School: Revisiting Sleeter's Essay
Authors: Wong Jean
Published: March 2016

Building on the ideas presented in Sleeter's (1987) work, this article explores contemporary discourses of learning disabilities (LD) circulating in an urban middle school for students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. Sleeter challenges the biological conceptualization of LD, and a legacy of her article is to broaden the unit of analysis, moving beyond the individual locus. In this article, I present examples from an ethnographic study focusing on the classroom discourses in which LD is constructed and deconstructed. Two special education teachers reveal how the dominant LD discourse informs their behaviorist and authoritative beliefs. In contrast, a general education teacher demonstrates how she positions a disabled student as competent and encourages the student to exercise agency during a writing conference.
Why Is There Learning Disabilities? A Critical Analysis of the Birth of the Field in Its Social Context
Authors: Sleeter Christine
Published: March 2016

This chapter presents an interpretation of why the category of learning disabilities emerged, that differs from interpretations that currently prevail. It argues that the category was created in response to social conditions during the late 1950s and early 1960s which brought about changes in schools that were detrimental to children whose achievement was relatively low. The category was created by white middle class parents in an effort to differentiate their children from low-achieving low-income and minority children. The category offered their children a degree of protection from probable consequences of low achievement because it upheld their intellectual normalcy and the normalcy of their home backgrounds, and it suggested hope for a cure and for their ability eventually to attain higher status occupations than other low achievers.
“We don’t have a box”: Understanding Hidden Disability Identity Utilizing Narrative Research Methodology
Authors: Valeras Aimee
Published: March 2016

A "hidden disability," one unapparent to outside observers, defies the outward social construction of disability. A narrative research approach is used to understand the process of personal identification (or lack thereof) with being "disabled." Self-narratives were elicited from three men and three women, ranging in age from 21 to 53 years who have had a hidden physical disability since before age thirteen. The conditions represented are: Juvenile Diabetes, Asthma, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, Epilepsy, Muscular Dystrophy, and Celiac Disease.While persons with hidden disabilities are afforded a sense of anonymity, they must contend with different challenges, including learning strategic self-disclosure and impression management; when to disclose and make disability visible and when to "pass" and give society the impression of "able-bodiedness." The choice, to be or not to be disabled, has important implications for the way we conceptualize disability, and the concept of identity as a whole.
Dyslexia and Creativity: The Education and Work of Robert Rauschenberg
Authors: Gobbo Ken
Published: March 2016

While there is no scientific proof of a direct relationship between learning disabilities and creativity, Robert Rauschenberg’s life and work provide several examples of the positive effect having a learning disability like dyslexia can have on an individual’s ability to develop and implement novel ideas. This article examines Rauschenberg’s education, work, and the relationship between his dyslexia and creativity. It also poses questions that may help to reframe this learning disability in a more positive way.
A Wholesome Horror: The Stigmas of Leprosy in 19th Century Hawaii
Authors: Amundson Ron , Ruddle-Miyamoto Akira
Published: March 2016

The village of Kalaupapa on Moloka'i is well known as the site of legally enforced exile for people in Hawaii with the disease of leprosy. Hawaii was the first nation in the world to institute such a treatment. Less well understood are the social influences that were seen to justify such a harsh treatment of so vulnerable a group of people. Race (and racism) was one influence, as was the fear of contagion. But equally significant was the social stigma produced by Western perceptions of the bodily differences of people with leprosy. Evidence from the Western press shows that the stigma produced by the perceived 'loathsomeness' of the symptoms of leprosy was a prime factor in the exile law. That stigma directly harmed not only people with leprosy, but also their friends and family who supported them.
Marshall P. Wilder and Disability Performance History
Authors: Schweik Susan
Published: March 2016

Marshall P. Wilder, born in 1859, was a highly visible public figure who is now forgotten. A famous vaudeville performer often described as a “hunchback dwarf,” Wilder played dynamically with the disabling discourses that framed him, and he resisted tokenization by developing and claiming cross-disability (as well as cross-class) alliances with marginalized others. His work speaks not only to disability studies but to the conjunction of performance studies and critical prison studies. Early in the last century, he set the stage for productive connections to be made in this one between the theaters of disability, poverty and incarceration.
Disability, Economic Globalization and Privatization: A Case Study of India
Authors: Hiranandani Vanmala , Sonpal Deepa
Published: March 2016

People with disabilities are one of the most disenfranchised groups in India. Standardized measurements of disability in India and internationally have overlooked the linkages between the economy and disability. In recent decades, neo-liberal economic reforms imposed in developing countries, under pressure from international financial institutions, have downsized state role, privatized social goods, and encouraged export-led strategies and market-based economics. India’s economic reforms, initiated in 1991, have led to rapid economic growth that is, however, increasingly mal-distributed.                         This paper investigates the implications of economic restructuring in the arenas of social programs, education, employment, accessibility, health, agriculture and food security, and water and land acquisition from a disability perspective. Our analysis shows that while increased employment opportunities and accessibility have benefitted middle-class and highly-skilled disabled persons, the majority of people with disabilities have been left out of India’s economic affluence. We contend that India’s globalized economy and reduced state role necessitate renewed understanding of human rights, including disability rights.
The Disabled Body in Julie Taymor’s Frida
Authors: Nyman Micki
Published: March 2016

Director Julie Taymor says that her choice to direct Frida (2002) was made, in part, by the “prospect of striking a balance between the realism of a period piece set in the Twenties, Thirties and Forties and the interior landscape of this woman’s mind” (Bosley 1).  To convey to the audience a combined sense of Frida Kahlo’s subjectivity, artistry and biography, Taymor employs digitally altered scenes to recreate her paintings which then come to life within the narrative.  Taymor also suggests a recurrent theme in Kahlo’s oeuvre, the permeability of death and life, while layering Frida’s inner realities, her maimed body, and aspects of her culture, both modern and traditional. Ultimately, Taymor’s focus on Frida’s disabled body helps film audiences understand the complexity of Kahlo’s life journey, one that continues to be constructed even after her death.
Verbal Apraxia
Authors: Eisenhauer Jennifer
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Disability, Non-disability and the Politics of Mourning: Re-conceiving the 'we'
Authors: McGuire Anne
Published: March 2016

In December of2007, the Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s national newspapers, published a series of articles written by columnist Ian Brown.  In the three part-series entitled, “The Boy in the Moon,” Brown narrates his life with his cognitively disabled son.  This paper explores Brown's articles in relation to Judith Butler's (2004) "Violence, Mourning, Politics," and conducts an analysis of how cognitive disability is being enacted as "not quite a life" (34). This paper demonstrates how Brown’s articles tell the story of cognitive disability as a state of brokenness, some-thing that requires fixing.  Significantly, when disability defies and/or resists fixing, it is discursively re-framed as a tragic loss.  By attending to the making of disability in Brown’s articles, this paper is more broadly interested in how disabled and non-disabled bodies ('we') are being formed in and through social spaces.
Facilitators and Barriers in Australian Disability Housing Support Policies: Using a Human Rights Framework
Authors: Parker Sarah , Fisher Karen
Published: March 2016

What prevents people with disabilities from having their right to housing support fulfilled? The article identifies the facilitators and barriers to adequate housing support in Australia for people who need 24-hour support by applying a human rights framework to analyze Australian disability housing support policies. The article provides an overview of approaches to housing support arrangements. It outlines the primary goals of disability housing support from disability theory and policy as encompassing human rights, quality of life, independent living and cost effectiveness. The research provides insight into the right of people with disabilities to housing support in a changing policy context and it identifies seven key facilitators and barriers to fulfilling the right to disability housing support: (1) legislation, agreements and regulations; (2) funding and demand management; (3) interagency coordination; (4) range, flexibility and choice of housing support; (5) staffing quality; (6) informal carers; and (7) discrimination.
Beyond Models: Some Tentative Daoist Contributions to Disability Studies
Authors: Stoltzfus Michael , Schumm Darla
Published: March 2016

Seeking away of dynamic balance in the midst of uncertainty and ambiguity is both a core Daoist teaching and a central experience of individuals living with chronic disability or illness.  This essay incorporates core Daoist themes to map alternative ways for thinking and talking about disability and chronic conditions.  A Daoist worldview can offer distinctive modes of responding to chronic disabilities which move beyond the standard or typical models.  Daoism illustrates that many forms of human embodiment are aspects of a single, ever-changing way and invites the integration of disability into the understanding of human life without necessitating categorization, definition, or cure.
Resisting the Reflection: Identity in Inclusive Life History Research
Authors: Bj Krist
Published: March 2016

This article addresses the issue of identity production and reproduction in relation to social participation of young adults with intellectual disabilities. It is based on life history research conducted in collaboration with young adults with intellectual disabilities in Iceland. The article challenges the usefulness of the intellectual disability label and examines how the participants resist the label by telling stories of competence and abilities. The article also explores the interplay of the intellectual disability label and other social categories, such as class and religion. It concludes with a call for more awareness of the effects that non-disabled professionals and researchers have on the intellectual disability identity by using a label that is grounded in a deficit understanding of disability.
Susan Burch, ed. Encyclopedia of American Disability History
Authors: Rembis Michael A.
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
In (Disability) Time
Authors: Ferris Jim
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Sidewalk Stories: The Troubling Task of Identification
Authors: Chandler Eliza
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
What’s Cool about Blindness?
Authors: Michalko Rod
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Locating the Bodies of Women and Disability in Definitions of Beauty: An Analysis of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty
Authors: Heiss Sarah
Published: March 2016

Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" aimed to widen cultural understandings of diverse bodies and embodied beauty. In this essay, however, I question the ability of the campaign to confront the limits of our current cultural understandings of embodied beauty and diversity. Drawing on feminist-disability theory, I argue that the campaign represented an ideology of naïve integration. While the acceptance of diverse physical bodies was espoused by the campaign, the textual and visual discourse simultaneously reflected many traditional beauty standards and practices. I draw key examples from the discourse to support my claims that the campaign's discourse (re)inscribed meaning to the normate body and (re)made the body through traditional beauty practices. The subsequent ramifications of societal understandings of the body and the aesthetic value of women with physical disabilities are discussed.
on the figurative use of blindness and lameness in poetry
Authors: Tokawa Kenji Haakon
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Inclusion of Students with Disabilities in Higher Education: Performance and participation in student's experiences
Authors: Sachs Dalia , Schreuer Naomi
Published: March 2016

To expand knowledge on the accessibility of higher education to students with disabilities, the study compared 170 such students in higher education institutions in Israel with 156 students without disabilities for formal achievements and overall participation in higher education. Results revealed that academic achievements of students with disabilities were almost as high as those of students without disabilities, and overall students' experiences were similar. But the two groups of students differed in areas of experiences, as did students with various disabilities among themselves. Analysis of the data indicates that students with disabilities invested more time to meet the demands of their studies, participated in fewer social and extra-curricular activities, and used computers and information technology less. Higher education institutes still have a long way to go to reduce the gap in social inclusion of students with disabilities and to adjust academic standards for their needs.
Edward Albee’s Eugenic Theatrics: Disability Presence in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Authors: Fox Ann
Published: March 2016

Edward Albee’s 1962 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a landmark American play for the challenges it presented to conventional theater, both thematically and dramaturgically.  In this essay, I argue that recognizing the disability presence in Albee’s play as embodied in the work’s references to eugenics is also important to a fuller understanding of the play’s revolutionary nature.  Through his references to pronatalism as well as genetic engineering and sterilization, Albee invokes the presence of those disabled bodies upon whose oppression the regulation of normalcy over the twentieth-century has rested.  In this way, we can come to see that disability does not simply metaphorize the gender oppression and middle-class complacency the play attacks, but is itself also recognized and historicized.  Reading Albee’s play in this way further suggests the importance of re-reading canonical drama through the lens of disability studies.
Between the Lines: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Disability Policy in Portugal
Authors: Pinto Paula Campos
Published: March 2016

Law and policy around disability in Portugal, as elsewhere, are undergoing rapid change towards a model based on human rights for all. Whether this transformation translates into real gains for people with disabilities, however, is yet to be proved. This paper addresses this question by undertaking a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the single most important policy instrument in the disability arena in Portugal: the First National Action Plan for the Integration of People with Disabilities and Impairment (PAIPDI). The analysis demonstrates that while presented under a somehow different package—one in which a new discourse on rights is highlighted—there is much continuity in how the problem of disability is represented and managed in the Portuguese society. However, the adoption of the rights discourse on disability also signals an important shift, one that reflects the increased hegemony of the disability movement, not just nationally but globally. In this sense, new and exciting possibilities for disabled people are opening up to reshape the power relations that in the past have sustained their domination. Its potential, however, will greatly depend on the ability of the disability movement to build on this momentum and use human rights as a tool to push for disability justice in social, and not just discursive, practices.
Ending the Silence of People with Little or No Functional Speech: Testifying in Court
Authors: Bryen Diane Nelson , Wickman Christopher H.
Published: March 2016

Keywordscrime, abuse, testify, court, speech disability, AACAbstractCrime against people with developmental and other disabilities is similar in scope to that of women, children and the elderly. However, their victimization remains largely invisible and unaddressed (Bryen, Carey, & Frantz, 2005; Sobsey, 1994). Research from the United States indicates that people with developmental disabilities are four to 10 times more likely to be victims of a crime and that crimes against them are less likely to be reported or prosecuted (Martin, Ray, Sotres-Alvares, Kupper, Moracco & Dickens, 2006). Individuals with disabilities who have little or no functional speech face a double vulnerability when it comes to crime, abuse, and neglect as they are often the voiceless and invisible members of society (Bryen & Frantz, 2004; Bryen, Carey, & Frantz, 2005; Davies, 2002). The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) describe court rulings in the United States that clarify the impact that having a little or no functional speech (LNFS) and relying on the use of AAC plays in testifying in court, and (2) describe the outcomes of court cases when someone with LNFS testifies in court as a witness in their own defence when they have been a victim of a crime. In order to accomplish these dual purposes, a comprehensive search of federal and state cases involving people with LNFS and their ability to successfully testify in court, a comprehensive search of federal and state cases involving people with LNFS and their ability to testify in court was performed using LexisNexis. The results of this study are discussed in terms of policies and practices that affect people with LNFS themselves, professionals who support them, and the court system.
Parents and Course Leaders' Experiences of the ComAlong Augmentative and Alternative Communication Early Intervention Course
Authors: Ferm Ulrika , Andersson Margareta , Broberg Malin , Liljegren Torunn , Thunberg Gunilla
Published: March 2016

Keywordsearly intervention, parental education, communication development, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), parents' experiencesAbstractThe aim of this study was to evaluate parents and course leaders' experiences of the ComAlong early intervention course; a parental course about communication, communication development, play, responsive communication strategies and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). ComAlong targets parents of pre-school children with extensive communication difficulties and, at times, additional disabilities. Data consisted of course evaluation surveys filled out by 86 parents (57 mothers and 29 fathers) and one grandmother and interviews of four parents and four course leaders. Overall, parents were positive about the course. This was shown in ratings of 21 statements, in written answers to seven open questions and in the interviews. The total mean value for all statements was 4.4 (max 5) and the median was 4 or 5. The means for the 20 statements varied between 3.9 and 4.8 and half of all statements had mean values of 4.5 or higher. The mean value for the course (parents’ rating of the course on a 1 to 10 scale where 10 was the best) was 8.5 (Mdn and mode = 8, SD = 1.1). On the whole, parents and course leaders were satisfied. Parents learned about communication and AAC and experienced that communication with the child had changed to the better. In particular, parents appreciated meeting respectful and competent course leaders and other parents to children with varying disabilities. Information about the course before it started was a problematic issue. These and other findings are discussed with regard to early intervention for parents of children who use augmentative and alternative communication.
Whose "Voice" is it Anyway?: Giving Voice and Qualitative Research Involving Individuals that Type to Communicate
Authors: Ashby Christine E.
Published: March 2016

Keywordsvoice, qualitative research, supported typing, disability studies, interviewingAbstractOne of the critical questions facing Disability Studies is how to make central the voices of individuals with disabilities in research? In this paper, I interrogate the idea of "voice" in critical, qualitative research and its application to research involving individuals who do not use speech as their primary mode of expression. How does critical, qualitative research and theories of voice position participants whose means of expression challenge traditional notions of normative participation? I first problematize the premise of giving voice generally and then present four key issues, which include a) the question of competence for individuals who do not use speech, b) hearing silence, c) agency and voice, and d) broadening the conceptualization of voice beyond speech. I conclude with implications for qualitative researchers and others interested in facilitating voice for individuals using alternative forms of expression.
Are We There Yet? A Content Analysis of Ability Integrated Advertising on Prime-time TV
Authors: Farnall Olan F. , Lyons Kelli
Published: March 2016

After more than a decade with no quantitative update on the progress of advertising's integration of disabled characters this study found 29 out of 1,671 prime-time commercials analyzed included images of disability. Although the raw number is only 1.7% of the total sample it represents a 200% increase over 1999 totals.  The portrayals were much more likely to be major characters than background roles and the disability depicted in the commercials tended to be from a more diverse set of conditions than it was in the late 1980s.  Based on an approximately equal sample of television programming the ability-integrated advertising (AI advertising) appeared more frequently on cable channels (52%) than network channels (39%).  Keywords: ability-integrated advertising, content analysis, disability and advertising, SADP
"Life…in the midst of death": Notes on the Relationship Between Slave Insurance, Life Insurance and Disability
Authors: Ralph Michael
Published: March 2016

This article examines the way post-bellum genres of disability, race, and credit-debt shaped the emergence of US slave insurance and life insurance industries. After all, the same period which witnessed the demise of formal enslavement saw the debut of structures that protected the privilege of people whose wealth and power threatened to come undone: this would include sharecropping and convict leasing. Despite a similar emphasis on institutionalizing credit-debt relations, insurance appears benign by comparison. Even though insurance agencies assign differential value to human lives, the birth of insurance is seen, along with the triumph of capitalism and democracy, as part of the birth of freedom. In what follows, I explore a discourse on debility that was likewise a discourse on debt—one with enduring resonance for social movement politics.Keywords: disability, civil rights, social movement politics, slavery, capitalism
Introduction to the Special Issue on Disability and Work: Toward Re-Conceptualizing the 'Burden' of Disability
Authors: Lero Donna , Pletsch Carolyn , Hilbrecht Margo
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Disability and Work: The United Republic of Tanzania's Workplace Policies in the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2010
Authors: Aldersey Heather
Published: March 2016

Nations are increasingly demonstrating a commitment to disability rights by enacting national policies on disability. Among them, the United Republic of Tanzania has, in addition to being a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), made a public commitment to the rights of persons with disabilities through a number of national policy mechanisms such as the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2010. As in other nations with policy commitments to disability rights, however, the principles and promises made in policy documents often are not reflected in direct action for the Act’s intended beneficiaries. This article explores the challenges of translating policy to action by examining the accountability mechanisms tied to the employment-related Articles of the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2010 and by discussing studies that provide the "on the ground" employment reality in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  Keywords: Tanzania, Policy, People with Disabilities Act, Workplace Quotas, Employment
Workplace discrimination against Malaysians with disabilities: Living with it or fighting against it?
Authors: Khoo Suet Leng , Tiun Ling Ta , Lee Lay Wah
Published: March 2016

Anti-discrimination legislations and employment rights for People with Disabilities (PwDs) have moved to the central of policy in developed countries.  The emerging importance of the role and future of PwDs in society is necessitated by a paradigm shift from a ‘charity’ to a ‘human rights’ approach.  According to the ‘human rights’ approach, the universal (human) rights to a better quality of life should not be the sole exclusivity of able-bodied citizens only; but a privilege extended to PwDs too.  In Malaysia, the ‘human rights’ approach is slowly permeating into the country’s politico-institutional mechanisms reflected in national agendas such as the Vision 2020 blueprint that advocates a sustainable, caring and socially-inclusive Malaysian society.  In this regard, the adoption of the ‘human rights’ approach is timely and considered as a key prerequisite and milestone to enable and qualify Malaysia to be a developed nation by 2020.  To this end, several policies for PwDs have since been formulated.  However, this paper argues that these policies have failed to deliver in terms of establishing an equitable, socially-inclusive and discrimination-free working environment for Malaysian PwDs.  More significantly, this paper provides valuable empirical evidences that highlight the inadequacies of these policies to address and overcome issues of discrimination that are on-going and continue to persist in Malaysian workplaces.  This paper contends that Malaysia’s aspiration to be a caring and socially-inclusive society by 2020 is being challenged and at stake, if, issues of workplace discrimination against Malaysian PwDs are not resolved in a timely manner.
Blind Photographers: Vision, Accessibility, and Empowerment in the Museum
Authors: McCulloh Douglas
Published: March 2016

Photographs by blind artists are inherently conceptual. They operate at the heart of the medium, questioning the nature of sight and blindness, perception and photography. This paper uses a traveling museum exhibition—Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists—as a case study to explore these ideas and their implications for disability activism and exhibition accessibility. Using concrete examples and approaches, the paper proposes that an exhibition of work by blind photographers should become a laboratory of perception.  The paper concludes that the goal of exhibition design and interpretive elements should not be one-sided—access for the blind. Rather it should be reciprocal—equalizing the status of the blind and sighted. Such an exhibition accords the blind the right to fully inhabit and display the products of their rich visualizations, while impelling the sighted to question the scope and reliability of their own vision.Key Words: Blind access to museums, blind photographers, accessible curatorial practices.
"Lives Worth Living:" Theorizing Moral Status and Expressions of Human Life
Authors: Taylor Ashley
Published: March 2016

A growing body of work in feminist philosophy of disability, in particular, and philosophy of cognitive disability, more generally, demonstrates the discursive constitution of norms of intelligence and cognitive ability in order to undermine both the false assumptions about human ability and the gendered and racialized norms of rationality, independence, and competence that inform philosophical and bioethical theories about moral status. Many of these philosophical accounts of disability seem designed to—implicitly or explicitly—prove that, given some newly-valued norms,  certain persons do indeed have these capabilities, rather than to transform the social conditions that create such demarcations in the first place. In this paper, I argue that feminist philosophy of disability and moral philosophy more broadly would benefit if they were to consider the social conditions of possibility in which these qualifications for moral status arise, rather than continue to focus on the qualifications themselves. In order to argue in this way, I consider how assessments of moral status and human life simultaneously foreclose possible expressions of "lives worth living." I suggest, furthermore, that feminist philosophers of disability in particular and feminist philosophers in general would benefit if they were to consider the risks that this normative theorizing involves. In turn, I propose a way in which feminist philosophers ought to orient themselves in order to create the conditions of possibility for the emergence of divergent expressions of human well-being and moral potential. Keywords: personhood; intellectual disability; social justice; normative violence; feminist philosophy
Re-Reading Erving Goffman as an Emancipatory Researcher
Authors: Abrams Thomas
Published: March 2016

Erving Goffman’s work is often employed within Disability Studies.  However, in Canada and the UK, most authors only discuss his Stigma (1963) or Asylums (1961), and his work is often dismissed as: a) individualistic; b) lacking a notion of social structure; and c) politically benign.  In this paper, I argue that a re-reading of Erving Goffman is in order.  In particular I examine his “Mental Symptoms and Public Order” (1967) and “The Insanity of Place” (1971).  I argue that Goffman’s dismissal is unfair: each of the three criticisms above are out of order.  I conclude with a discussion of what a fair-to-Goffman disability studies might look like. Keywords: Erving Goffman, Emancipatory Research, Social Model of Disability
On Being Transminded: Disabling Achievement, Enabling Exchange
Authors: Dalke Anne , Mullaney Clare
Published: March 2016

We write collaboratively, as a recent graduate and long-time faculty member of a small women’s liberal arts college, about the mental health costs of adhering to a feminist narrative of achievement that insists upon independence and resiliency.  As we explore the destabilizing potential of an alternative feminist project, one that invites different temporalities in which dis/ability emerges and may be addressed, we work with disability less as an identity than as a generative methodology, a form of relation and exchange. Mapping our own college as a specific, local site for the disabling tradition of “challenging women,” we move to larger disciplinary and undisciplining questions about the stigma of mental disabilities, traversing the tensions between institutionalizing disability studies and the field’s promise of destabilizing the constrictions of normativity.Keywords: academia, dis/ability, disability studies, education, feminism, identity studies, mad pride, mad studies, mental health, mental illness, queer studies, temporality, women’s colleges
The Disability Studies in Education Annual Conference: Explorations of Working Within, and Against, Special Education
Authors: Connor David
Published: March 2016

This article focuses on the Disability Studies in Education (DSE) conference as an example of expanding disability studies (DS). First, the origins, purpose, and history of the DSE conference are described as a valid alternative discipline to special education. Second, the following three questions are posed in relation to DSE scholars: (1) To what degree can we transgress within existing structures of teacher education and doctoral programs without being provided lip-service, coopted, or dismissed as ideological versus practical? (2) To what degree can we engage (and critique) the field of special education within its journals and conferences—and provide a greater plurality of perspectives within them? And, (3) how can we strategize to widely circulate ideas within DSE throughout education and its related fields? Presentations from the 2012 DSE conference are analyzed, described, and used as a collective response to help answer these questions. Fourth, DSE scholars share post-conference thoughts on the future of DSE. Finally, the deep debt of DSE to DS is acknowledged, along with speculation about possible ways in which DSE may help inform the growth of DS. Keywords: disability studies in education, critical special educators, teacher education, research in education, ideology
On the possibilities and limits of "DEAF DEAF SAME": Tourism and empowerment camps in Adamorobe (Ghana), Bangalore and Mumbai (India).
Authors: Friedner Michele Ilana , Kusters Annelies
Published: March 2016

This article qualitatively analyzes the ways that the discourse of "deaf universalism" circulates within two common deaf practices: tourism and engaging in interventions. Arguing that the largely Northern-situated discipline of Deaf Studies does not adequately examine how deaf bodies and discourses travel, ethnographic data compiled in India and Ghana during transnational encounters is employed to examine how claims of "sameness" and "difference" are enacted and negotiated. Similarly, this article examines how deaf individuals and groups deploy the concepts of deaf "heavens" and "hells" to analyze their travel experiences and justify interventions. We argue that deaf travelers and those engaging in interventions, mostly from Northern countries, employ teleological concepts that they attempt to impose on deaf "others." Adopting a critical approach, this article argues for the importance of carving out a space within Deaf Studies for allowing non-Northern concepts to come to the fore.Keywords: Deaf, Development, Universalism, Discourse, India, Ghana
MetaMeta Upload: Composing a Review in ASL and English
Authors: Burke Teresa Blankmeyer
Published: March 2016

No abstract available