bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Stimulus Effects of Employment Programs for Minnesota's Disabled Citizens: A Case Study of Merrick, Inc.
Authors: Runge C. Ford
Published: March 2016

Keywords: human services; disabled adults; social dividends; economic benefitState budget negotiations around the country have focused on cuts to human services programs for people with disabilities. These include Long-Term Care (LTC) programs for disabled adults. Using an LTC day program in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota as a case study, this article provides an alternative perspective. It describes the social dividends of employment in LTC programs. These extend well beyond the services provided to clients. Other dividends include wages to program staff; avoided costs of residential supervision; taxes paid by clients and staff; state revenue from charitable gambling and grants supplementing state taxpayer dollars. Companies that employ people with disabilities through contracts with such programs do so because it makes good business sense. In sum, public investments in day service programs for people with developmental disabilities at this facility produce nearly $3.00 of economic benefit for every $1.00 spent. Apart from humanitarian concerns, government cuts to such programs are penny-wise and dollar-foolish.
Prenatal Testing, Disability, and Termination: An Examination of Newspaper Framing
Authors: Mills Carol Bishop , Erzikova Elina
Published: March 2016

Keywords: disability, genetics, prenatal testing, health, framingGiven the increase in the prevalence of prenatal testing for disabilities and the options following positive test results, this study investigates how information about prenatal testing and disability is represented in the top 30 newspaper markets in the United States. The goal is to examine how print media convey information about prenatal testing for disabilities to its readers. Analyses of 148 full-text articles from 1998 to 2006 indicate that disability is represented in negative terms. The negative framing of disability is paired with positive representations of prenatal testing, and to a slightly lesser extent, positive representations of termination of pregnancies involving a fetus diagnosed with disabilities.
Does Dis/ability Now Sit at the Table(s) of Social Justice and Multicultural Education? - A Descriptive Survey of Three Recent Anthologies
Authors: Connor David
Published: March 2016

Keywords: disability, diversity, culture, social justiceIn this paper I contemplate the recent inclusion of disability within three contemporary diversity-based anthologies on social justice and multicultural education: Diversity and Multiculturalism: A Reader (2009), The Handbook of Social Justice in Education (2009), and Social Justice Pedagogy Across the Curriculum (2010). Using a macro analysis of each book and a micro analysis of ninety-nine chapters in total, I analyze emergent themes and contemplate ways in which disability is framed within broader conceptions of social justice and notions of multiculturalism. Additionally, I discuss the implications for Disability Studies in Education being included within these anthologies on social justice and multicultural education, and describe potential areas of interdisciplinary growth within policy, theory, research and practice.
Trapped Between Ableism and Neoliberalism: Critical Reflections on Disability and Employment in India
Authors: Kumar Arun , Sonpal Deepa , Hiranandani Vanmala
Published: March 2016

Despite affirmative actions such as reservations in government employment, incentives and subsidies to employers, tax exemptions to persons with disabilities, skill-development trainings etc, employment for persons with disabilities continues to be characterised by lower work-force participation, lower wages, lack of career advancement opportunities, and discrimination at the workplace.  Simultaneously, social security benefits have been declining due to shrinking state role. With the ratification of the UNCRPD, preparation of the new disability legislation and increasing pressure from the disability rights movement in India, questions of work and employment have begun to gain attention. Using a case study approach, this article interrogates the outcomes of three employment initiatives in India. We contend that while access to employment opportunities for persons with disabilities may have increased, the  responses remain trapped in constructs of ableism and the outcomes adversely affected by neoliberalism. The article calls for developing a more critical research agenda and building capacities for wider contestation against ableism and neoliberalism. Keywords: ableism, employment, disability rights, India, neoliberalism
Call for Papers: Disabilities in Children's Literature: A Special Issue of Children's Literature Association Quarterly
Authors: Pollard Scott
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Incurable Blackness: Criminal Disenfranchisement, Mental Disability, and the White Citizen
Authors: Dilts Andrew
Published: March 2016

The Maryland State Constitution states that its General Assembly may, "regulate or prohibit the right to vote of a person convicted of infamous or other serious crime or under care or guardianship for mental disability." In a single sentence, the link between criminality and mental disability is invoked in order to draw an internal boundary around those who can take part in the project of representative government. Through a close reading of one particular moment in the history of Maryland's disenfranchisement provisions, I show how these restrictions could buttress prevailing racial hierarchies. Delegates to Maryland's nineteenth century constitutional conventions explicitly understood disenfranchisement as a practice that managed the boundaries of full citizenship through the courts' power to determine criminal guilt and mental competence. In defining "exceptions" to the franchise, the delegates were additionally shoring up the increasingly unstable conception of whiteness. The figure of the "free negro" was persistently invoked to do this work, marked through criminality and insanity as civically disabled in order to both reduce the threat that s/he posed to the standing of white workers and to shore up the purity of whiteness itself as innocent, able, and fit to rule. In so far as disenfranchisement is an instrument of racial oppression, it continues to operate racially not just in spite of color-blind liberalism, but also precisely through its ability to disarm claims of racial animus. The norms that drove the adoption of disenfranchisement in the nineteenth century continue to ground these exclusions to the vote, meaning that the ideal figure of the American citizen continues to be compulsorily white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied. Ending this legacy of social and political hierarchization requires that we remove disenfranchisement provisions, but also move beyond the logic of inclusion, divesting the vote as a location that finalizes, essentializes, and fixes the boundaries of the polity.
HUG
Authors: Jones Khary
Published: March 2016

When Asa, friend and manager, realizes musician Drew is off his meds, the cross-town drive to sign his contract becomes significantly more complicated. This article features still photos from the 2009 Sundance Official Selection, HUG, followed by a discussion by Emily Martin. Keywords: psychosis, sound, race, masculinity, disability
Crisis, Class, and Disability in Argentina: Red por los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad
Authors: Schrader Stuart , Penillas Facundo Chavez
Published: March 2016

REDI—Red por los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad—is a radical disability-rights organization based in Argentina. Until the economic crisis of 2001, REDI focused on lobbying for increased legislative protection of the disabled and enforcement of extant laws in this regard. But the crash suggested that the difficulties facing disabled populations seeking to access to employment and education are rooted in the dynamics of capitalism, which condemn large swaths of the populace to systematic unemployment. Thus, REDI adopted a practical perspective that frames disability and chronic unemployment as a class issue, with the goal of critiquing two common misconceptions: first, that disability is a medical issue to be resolved individually and, second, that those facing chronic unemployment and organizing to overcome it are fighting a different fight from disabled people. Under the slogan "fight for the right to be exploited"—believing that disabled populations, when we include people injured on the job, comprise what Marx labeled the lowest stratum of the industrial reserve army—REDI joined the piqueteros and aimed to increase consciousness that both groups could benefit from an organizational principle that saw their struggles as one. Especially since the global economic crisis of 2008, which has been especially protracted in Argentina, REDI has remained devoted to the notion that the struggle for employment is one moment in a struggle for economic and political autonomy that contests the very foundations of the capitalist social system. This interview with a member of the Steering Committee, Facundo Chavez Penillas, describes REDI's history, organizing principles and campaigns, and its class analysis of disability. Other topics include the relationship between disability-rights activism and the so-called "Pink Tide" in Latin America, as well as the Argentine experience of bridging disability-rights activism and labor activism.
Disability as an Asset? Reflections on Employment Patterns in the Health and Social Care Sector
Authors: Andreassen Tone Alm
Published: March 2016

The number of people with health problems and disabilities living outside the labor market and on public income security puzzles politicians. The problems associated with having a disability seem to be countered by measures directed either towards people with disabilities (employability programs) or towards employers (anti-discrimination legislation). These problems are at the forefront of many policy discussions. In this article I discuss an alternative perspective, reflecting on whether, in some segments of the labor market, there are dynamics which indicate that disability is an asset, not a liability. I use the Norwegian labor market as the case for this discussion. The proportion of workers with disabilities is higher in the health and social care sector than in the total Norwegian labor market. This overrepresentation of workers with disabilities has remained constant since 2000 and may indicate a particularly unhealthy and impairment-producing sector. This article examines whether this overrepresentation might also indicate that this sector of the labor market considers disability to be an asset – a unique qualification required for certain tasks in the sector. Keywords: disability concepts, labor market, employment, health sector, employer attitudes
Review of Potts, Good Eggs: a Memoir & Tsigdinos, Silent Sorority: A (Barren) Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found
Authors: Benedicks Crystal
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Review of Bell, Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions
Authors: Newman Adam P.
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Review of Schuster, Neurasthenic Nation: America's Search for Health, Happiness, and Comfort, 1869-1920
Authors: Nielsen Kim E.
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Review of Straus, Extraordinary Measures: Disability in Music
Authors: Wood Tara K.
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Rehabilitation Reservations: Native Narrations of Disability and Community
Authors: Senier Siobhan
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
"Look at Me:" Portraiture and Agency
Authors: Sauer Janet S.
Published: March 2016

Keywords: disability, methodology, portraiture, social justice, special education Historically, the dominant research paradigms involving the study of people with disabilities involved experimentally designed studies or other medically orientated approaches. This paper examines portraiture as a form of qualitative inquiry offering emancipatory possibilities for children with significant disabilities and transformative positive reinterpretations of disability as a social construct for their teachers and other people in their lives.  Three narrative portraits of young people with disabilities were created based on a year-long portraiture study involving the collection of observational data, informal interviews, artifacts, and discourse analysis to capture the “essence” of their humanness.  Through an examination of this portrait study and others from across the humanities, this paper provides examples where the “subjects” asserted themselves in ways akin to Giroux’s agency (1987) suggesting portraiture might provide a unique and credible avenue to respectfully study and learn more about people with disabilities too often left on the fringe of society.
The Myth of American Ability: Cooper’s Leatherstocking, the Frontier Tradition, and the Making of the American Canon
Authors: Jordan Thomas
Published: March 2016

Key Words: Disability; Able-bodiedness; Frontier; MythJames Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales have achieved canonical literary status in the US academy and provide a representative example of the frontier tradition in American writing.  Through a close reading of Cooper’s first romance, I argue that America’s longstanding frontier narrative is predicated on the cultural projection of the able-bodied hero.  In The Pioneers, Cooper relies on dueling constructions of disability and able-bodiedness to distinguish his white hero from his friend and Native American counterpart, Chingachgook.  While Chingachgook’s disability provides the logic for his eventual suicide and removal from the narrative, Natty Bumppo’s strength of character becomes registered through the physical perfection of his body.  In celebrating Natty Bumppo’s passage from old age in The Pioneers to new youth in The Deerslayer, the critical tradition surrounding the Leatherstocking series has tacitly endorsed Cooper’s corporeal hierarchy, suggesting that the myth of the American frontier relies upon a much deeper myth of American ability.
A Discourse Analysis of Parents' Talk Around Their Children's Autism Labels
Authors: Lester Jessica
Published: March 2016

Keywords: Autism; Discursive Psychology; Parents of Children with Autism Labels; Social-Relational Model of DisabilityNot so long ago autism was the province of a small group of individuals. Yet it is now everywhere, working to shape the public's imagination and ways of talking about the construct of autism. Public stories told about autism often conflict with and contradict one another, particularly as public stories meet the private, everyday practices of individuals with autism labels and their families and friends. Drawing upon discursive psychology, I share the findings generated from a discourse analysis of 14 interviews with parents of children with autism labels focused on the meanings of autism. I illustrate the ways in which the participants constructed autism as: (1) untenable and apt to receive multiple meanings; (2) representative of a different or non-normative way of thinking; and (3) minimally relevant, as the 'truth' of autism was overshadowed by bodily realities.
Autistic Human Rights-A Proposal
Authors: Sarrett Jennifer
Published: March 2016

Autism and related disorders are increasingly discussed in disability literature as the field is more confidently discussing intellectual and developmental impairments. The current paper describes how autism is considered within critical issues in the disability literature with a special focus on disability definition and politics of identity. These issues are central to discussions of human rights from a disability perspective, one which autism is uniquely situated to address. Definitions and traits of autism are related to physical, intellectual, and psychiatric differences making this diagnostic or identity category well suited to address to the issues of all disabilities groups. Using autism as a basis, a model for human rights is built around the interconnected traits of interdependence, individuality, and a consideration for the sphere of human diversity. Though developed around autism, the paper shows how the model is applicable to all states of being and addresses major disability issues.  Keywords: Neurodiversity, Human Rights, Autism, Disability Studies
Toward an Understanding of the 'Medical Plantation' as a Cultural Location of Disability
Authors: Dudley Rachel
Published: March 2016

This article uses Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell's concept of "cultural locations of disability" to theorize the 19th century medical plantation as a space in which black enslaved women were used as raw materials for medical-scientific advancement. The central argument is that the history can be perceived in new ways by applying the dual frameworks of black feminist theory and cultural disability theory to understand the medical plantation as a cultural location of disability. In so doing, the article demonstrates that on the 19th century medical plantation—a locality spatially separate from the agricultural plantation—black women's bodies were imagined as the ideal test subjects of research and innovation within what became modern gynecology.Keywords: medical plantation, cultural locations of disability, slavery, nineteenth-century medicine, black feminist theory, women's health, disability theory
Review of The Joe Bonham Project
Authors: Fox Ann M.
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Editors' Introduction
Authors: Henderson Bruce , Ostrander Noam
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Next to Normal and the Persistence of Pathology in Performances of Psychosocial Disability
Authors: Wallin Scott
Published: March 2016

The award-winning musical Next to Normal is widely lauded for addressing the stigma of mental illness. However, the play uses a medical model of psychosocial disability in a way that narrows and sanitizes the representation of people who have such disabilities. Analyzing Next to Normal’s performances, critical reviews, artist commentary, and audience reactions, this article argues that the musical fails to remove stigma associated with people with psychosocial disabilities and overlooks an ecological perspective that would better honor their experiences. Keywords: psychosocial disability, madness, mental illness, theater, performance
Psychomimesis: LSD and Disability Immersion Experiences of Schizophrenia
Authors: Donaldson Elizabeth J.
Published: March 2016

Before LSD became infamous as a psychedelic in the late 1960s, it had an earlier career as a psychotomimetic--a drug which could produce a “model psychosis” or “artificial schizophrenia.”  This paper focuses on the use of LSD in psychiatry in this often overshadowed period.  I examine experiments that use LSD as a prosthetic tool to produce “disability immersion” experiences of schizophrenia in people without psychiatric symptoms or diagnoses.  This use of LSD reversed the traditional way drugs circulate in psychiatry: instead of patients receiving mind-altering medication to ameliorate disabling psychiatric symptoms, mental health professionals took LSD to temporarily disable their normal cognition. Despite the problematic nature of disability immersion experiences in general and the negative valence often attached to mental illness in these accounts, these trips into madness produced, I will argue, positive therapeutic insights, perhaps best illustrated by architect Kiyo Izumi’s LSD-inspired design for Yorkton Psychiatric Centre.Keywords: schizophrenia, mental illness, psychiatry, disability simulation, LSD
The Absence of Psychiatric C/S/X Perspectives in Academic Discourse: Consequences and Implications
Authors: Jones Nev , Brown Robyn
Published: March 2016

There is growing recognition that psychiatric consumer, survivor or ex-patient perspectives are not well-integrated into disability studies work and academic discourse more generally. While limited debate has focused on whether the preferred next step is an independent ‘mad studies’ discourse or a disability studies framework more inclusive of c/s/x voices, the broader consequences of this absence have been largely overlooked. The purpose of this review is to highlight three major consequences of the absence of c/s/x voices in US academics: The (1) relatively greater biomedicalization and (2) clinical professionalization of psychiatric disability compared with other forms of disability, and (3) barriers and obstacles to training and advancement in academia for doctoral students and faculty with psychiatric disabilities.Keywords: consumer/survivor movement, disability studies, activist scholarship, disability in higher education
The Mad Border Body: A Political In-betweeness
Authors: Kafai Shayda
Published: March 2016

Sanity and madness have historically and culturally functioned as binary opposites, the former serving as a representation of normalcy, while the latter functions as shorthand for defect and abnormality. This essay examines the artificiality of this binary construction and offers the mad border body as an alternative. Informed by the works of Chicana theorist Gloria Anzaldúa and queer theorist Jacquelyn N. Zita, the mad border body argues that one can simultaneously inhabit the spaces of sanity and madness. As a third positionality, the mad border body is an alternative to the sane/mad construction in that it advocates for a disruption of binary logic all together. In its examination of this alternative location of being, this essay is also grounded in the author’s own bodily experiences with madness, in her own phenomenology of disability. Keywords: madness, sanity, phenomenology of disability, mad border body
Review of Jutel, Putting a Name to It
Authors: May Rachel
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Coming out of the hard of hearing closet: Reflections on a shared journey in academia
Authors: Blankmeyer Burke Teresa , Nicodemus Brenda
Published: March 2016

Deaf academics who navigate aspects of their professional lives through signed language interpreting services face a range of issues, including handling perceptions of their Hearing peers, identifying and negotiating their own communication preferences, and balancing personal and professional relationships with their interpreters. Interpreters bring individual sets of schemas and skills to their work, which impacts the interpreted interaction. In this paper, a Deaf academic and her interpreter/colleague discuss various challenges in having an interpreter—and being an interpreter—in academia. Topics include being “outed” as a person with a disability because of the presence of an interpreter; the need for interpreters with specialized academic vocabulary; the responsibilities of the Deaf academic and the interpreter in interpreted interactions; and the sense of vulnerability, intimacy, and autonomy experienced by the Deaf academic and the interpreter. The article is a shared reflection about the evolution of a relationship, beginning with the authors’ respective roles as client and interpreter, and leading into to their present alliance as colleagues and friends.Key words: interpretation, Deaf, academic, ethics, disability, autonomy, vulnerability, intimacy, philosophy, hard of hearing, hearing impaired, sign language, oral interpreting, American Sign Language
Reflexivity in Research: Disability between the Lines
Authors: Rinaldi Jen
Published: March 2016

The purpose of this article is to consider the implications to reflexivity in disability research. The author begins by positioning herself in the field of disability studies, disclosing her own experiences. She goes on to trouble the expectation to disclose. The call to confess may be grounded in historical developments within feminist scholarship, including standpoint theory and research reflexivity—methodological tools that are certainly valuable in the pursuit of knowledge, but that are not without criticism. The author explores some key critiques, and considers the implications, specifically regarding her own responsibility to give account. She demonstrates that the sharing of personal experience and the disclosure of identity is not only difficult, uncomfortable, and invasive, but is sometimes useless, for even our confessions may be subject to thematic interpretation.Keywords: disclosure, standpoint theory, reflexivity, narrative, invisible disability
The Blurring of Boundaries between Research and Everyday Life: Dilemmas of Employing One’s Own Experiential Knowledge in Disability Research
Authors: Mogendorff Karen
Published: March 2016

Researchers with experiential disability knowledge increasingly engage in socio-medical research. In this paper the author discusses her experiences with employing her own lived experiences with disability in academic and non-academic research projects. Incorporating one’s own lived experiences in research implies a blurring of boundaries between the private, the professional, and the public. The latter may give rise to dilemmas of double membership and dilemmas of disclosure in publications. Double membership may become problematic for disabled researchers who identify with the disability community if conceptualizations of disability in scientific communities unwittingly echo negative societal images of disability. Because of the low status of disabled people and of experiential knowledge, disclosure of own experiences with disability may negatively influence young disabled researchers’ careers.  Key Words: deployment of experiential knowledge, the researcher in disability studies, dilemmas
Divas Live Among Us
Authors: Pickens Ther
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Reclaiming the Faith
Authors: Braswell Harold
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
People with Speech Differences as Ethnographers: Implications for Research
Authors: Bennett Andrew B.
Published: March 2016

Individuals with speech disabilities who perform ethnographic researcher can exhibit certain vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities are generally tied to participants (Behar, 1996). These vulnerabilities generally focus on some particular attribute (Duffy, 2008). However, Ballamingle and Johnson (2011) argue that researchers can also be vulnerable. Broun and Heshusius (2004) had previously demonstrated how physical vulnerabilities can impact researchers with disabilities. Researcher vulnerabilities, as well as potential strengths, are important because of the role of speech in the ethnographic research practice. This article shall describe issues involved with the actual doing of ethnographic research. This discussion focuses on speech while doing fieldwork. In addition, to the discussion of fieldwork, this article also discusses the presentation of the work, especially with regards to professional conferences. Keywords: ethnographic practice, speech disability, role of researchers, researcher vulnerability, presentations
Guest editors' introduction to special issue
Authors: Ostrove Joan M. , Rinaldi Jennifer
Published: March 2016

The guest editors of this special issue on researcher identity offer reflections and an overview of the issue.
Becoming Educated: The Fight for Free and Appropriate Education by Parents of Children with Mental Retardation during the Post–World War II Decades
Authors: Krainz Thomas
Published: March 2016

During the post—World War II years, obtaining an education for a child with mental retardation was a difficult, if not impossible, undertaking. Most public schools barred children who earned low scores on intelligence quotient (IQ) exams. Parents of children with mental retardation in Jefferson County, Colorado, organized to offer mutual support and to obtain services, especially education, for their children. These parents underwent a political transformation as they fought for access to public education. Over time, parents who initially made polite requests for token access to schools began making loud demands for a fair share of services for their children. Eventually they became politically sophisticated and aggressive in altering the educational status quo. Parents also slowly moved from an ideology that focused on their particular children to an inclusive ideology that addressed the needs of all disabled children. Keywords: mental retardation, education, children, parents, Colorado, post—World War II
New Measures to Assess Attitudes and Intended Behaviors of Paid Caregivers toward Sexuality of Adults with Developmental Disabilities
Authors: Jorissen Shari L. , Burkholder Gary J.
Published: March 2016

Keywords: attitudes, staff, sexuality, sexual behavior, relationships, developmental disabilities Background: Attitudes that paid residential caregivers have about the sexuality of clients with developmental disabilities may impact adequate and appropriate care as well as the rights of clients in residential settings. The purpose of the study was to develop two surveys to assess attitudes and intended behaviors of staff who work with individuals with developmental disabilities.Materials & Methods: A survey to measure attitudes and one to measure behavior were developed, piloted, and validated through a test-retest process and use of a previously developed survey that contained language that was dated and inconsistent.Results: Both surveys were found to be reliable and valid, and attitudes and intended behaviors were found to be significantly correlated.Conclusions: The development of reliable and valid tools to assess attitudes and intended behaviors of caregivers is important for establishing appropriate training, policy, and procedures for handling sexuality-related issues with clients with developmental disabilities.
Disability rights between legal discourses and policy narratives: An analysis of the European and Canadian frameworks
Authors: Hoffmann Julia , Dakroury Aliaa
Published: March 2016

Keywords: Communication Rights; Disability; Europe; Canada; Policy; Telecommunications; United Nations; Convention; Equality; DiscriminationAbstract: In 2000, 191 of the United Nations' member states adopted a number of goals to target major concerns to the global human family to be achieved by the year 2015. It was hoped that the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs) were to "foster collaborative action to reduce poverty, improve health and address educational and environmental concerns around the world’s most pressing development problems" (United Nations, 2010). Yet, while the MDGs tackled a variety of crucial needs at the international level (including health, poverty, maternal health, environment, gender equality, child mortality and education). Unfortunately, they have not included the monitoring and evaluation of rights of persons with disabilities; a segment of the world population that is considered to be representing the largest minority in the world. Communication scholars (Thomas, 2005; Lee, 2008) have underscored the importance of "global advocacy" concerning extending communication rights to empower these groups. Nonetheless, it was argued, the communication rights movement has so far focused mainly on debates on issues such as media ownership, regulations within cultural industries, intellectual property rights and failed to prioritize the need to assert the rights of persons with disabilities. Along these lines, and adopting in underscoring the relationship between citizenship and disability rights, this paper aims to analyze, from a communication rights perspective, the significance of underscoring the need to "include" the persons with disabilities to the enforcement and protection of their rights. Specifically, we examine the implementation of the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Canada and Europe. Particularly it argues that while the Convention has certainly contributed to a re-emphasis of rights of persons with disabilities and had a positive and reformative effect on disability legislation and policy narratives in both the international and national spheres, it remains to be assessed to what extent its provisions will be translated into policy at a national and regional level. After all, such enforcement is related to a great extent to the social and cultural structure in a given society.
Normalcy, Knowledge, and Nature in Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Authors: Ray Sarah Jaquette
Published: March 2016

This article analyzes Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, using a combination of both disability studies theory and ecocriticism.  The author argues that the novel’s main character, Christopher Boone, presents a social model of disability by challenging dominant society’s treatment of him as “not normal.” Christopher is ostensibly diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, although the novel never explicitly labels him as disabled in any way. Through Christopher’s views of nature, language, knowledge, and social constructions of disability, we learn that disability is an unstable category, and that dominant society can be disabling.  Importantly, though, Christopher’s critique of society is, as the author argues, fundamentally environmental. That is, Christopher’s views of language, knowledge, and even the more-than-human world itself are central to his destabilization of the category of disability. Christopher’s environmental sensibility and critique of society’s disabling qualities emerge primarily through his discussions of language, which he finds suspect because it distances humans from the world it describes.  Thus, the novel suggests that the disabling features of society that Christopher encounters are the same features that distance humans from nature, particularly through language.  Keywords: eco-phenomenology, ecocriticism, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Asperger’s Syndrome, nature, language, body, epistemology
A Narrative Inquiry of Self Advocacy: Rethinking Empowerment from Liberal Sovereignty to Arendtian Spontaneity
Authors: Clifford Stacy Anne
Published: March 2016

Self-advocacy groups, which are run by and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, follow traditional liberal definitions of empowerment that center on the cognitive capacities of citizens. Empowerment counters threats of powerlessness and paternalism, but it also threatens to exclude people with more profound forms of cognitive impairment from political participation. Moreover, cognitive-centric accounts of empowerment fail to fully capture the kinds of trials and triumphs I witnessed while observing a regional self-advocacy office between 2008 and 2010. Using Hannah Arendt’s concept of action, mainly developed in The Human Condition, I rethink empowerment along Arendt’s three dimensions of politics as spontaneous, plural, and public. I provide a narrative account of one self-advocacy group’s monthly chapter meeting, arguing that their combined public presence successfully combats ableist prejudice, even as it fails to imitate liberal understandings of empowerment. My account thus offers critical disability studies an alternative conception of political subjectivity.KEYWORDS: self-advocates, intellectual disability, grounded theory, subjectivity, politics
How We Swim
Authors: Ferris Jim
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Foucault and ‘the Right to Life’: from Technologies of Normalization to Societies of Control”
Authors: Anders Abram
Published: March 2016

From the perspective of Michel Foucault’s conceptualizations of biopower and technologies of normalization, disability activism emerges as a collective protest against the form of power/knowledge that produces disability as an abject identity. Yet, disability activists also claim a “right to life” that biopower would seem to both promise and withhold—the production of new capacities for health. Disabled people are necessarily oriented to seek relief from the indignities of social disenfranchisement and paternalist interventions, while simultaneously relying on the institutional mechanisms through which these effects are produced as the means of seeking new norms for living. As reform efforts increasingly focus on quality of life and seek to empower “consumers” of health services, we are inexorably moving beyond the political costs and historical limits of rights discourse: we now grapple with problems unique to societies of control.  Keywords:  biopower, Michel Foucault, health, normalization, power, rights, societies of control
Examining the influence of relationship to disability on the motivations of wheelchair basketball spectators
Authors: Cottingham Michael Paul , Byon Kevin , Chatfield Sheryl , Carroll Michael
Published: March 2016

Abstract Participation and interest in disability sport has grown tremendously, resulting in expansion of the responsibilities of promoters of adaptive sport. Prior research has provided insight regarding consumers of disabled sport, although one factor, spectators’ relationship to disability, offers great potential for use of market segmentation practices. This research, conducted at a national wheelchair basketball event, examined differences in motivation between spectators with and without relationships to disability and between those who did or did not identify themselves as having a disability. The results of this research indicate differences in motivating factors among the groups, supporting practitioner use of market segmentation. Keywords: consumer behavior, disability sport marketing, relationship to disability
"It’s a Jungle Out There:" Blackness and Disability in Monk
Authors: Pickens Ther
Published: March 2016

In Monk, the social structures that create disability have a relationship of reciprocal maintenance with the structures that sustain race. Specifically, I examine the moments in which Adrian’s disability and other characters’ blackness creates tension. These scenes are typically understood as humorous, drawing on Adrian’s disability and stock figures like the angry black man, Mammy, and the murderous hip-hop star. Yet, the commitment to these narratives remains tenuous because the tension between Adrian and the black characters is not always contentious, nor is it a consistently missed opportunity for nuance. Instead, I argue Monk reveals a more complex interplay between narratives of blackness, disability, and white liberalism. Namely, Adrian’s awkward exchanges lay bare the tensions present and open up space to see that we read disabled and racial identities in contact according to a logic determined not just by ability, but also by race.
Sustainable Museum Access: A Two-way Street
Authors: Levent Nina , Pursley Joan Muyskens
Published: March 2016

Many adults who are blind or have low vision are reluctant to visit museums because of disappointing or less-than-welcoming experiences in the past. To attract visually impaired people to your museum, the authors urge you to make outreach and program development a "two-way street," to solicit advice and criticism from a variety of people who are blind or have low vision. In addition, they share issues raised at focus groups they conducted as part of Art Beyond Sight's Multi-Sight Museum Accessibility Study and its Project Access New York program.Key wordsAccessible museum programsBlind Focus groupsmuseum audience development
Museum Experience and Blindness
Authors: Levent Nina , Kleege Georgina , Pursley Joan Muyskens
Published: March 2016

This is the introduction to the Special issue: Museum Experience and Blindness
From the Mind’s Eye: Museum and Art Gallery Appreciation for the Blind -- Canadian Perspectives
Authors: Bieber Ruth , Rae John
Published: March 2016

A creative arts consultant and a disability rights advocate share their experiences of art programs for blind and visually impaired Canadians.   Key words:Blindness, blind museum access
Getting the Picture: My Experience with Described Art
Authors: Werner Craig
Published: March 2016

In the latter half of the twentieth century, blind children were given little--if any--instruction in art appreciation and criticism.  This lamentable gap in their education made it difficult for them not only to appreciate pictures but also to understand artistic conventions.  The author relates instances of how he came to grapple with the meaning of artistic movements and how they could be enhanced by realizing their connections with parallel movements in music.  A consistent process by which art can be elucidated to blind people should include explaining the basics of what is going on in the picture, putting the work in an artistic context, elaborating on seemingly minute but important details, and discussing any critical controversies about the work's interpretation.  Commendable work is being done in helping the blind appreciate art, but more needs to be done. Key words: Blindness, blind museum access, verbal description of art, audio description.
Mission and Low Vision: A Visually Impaired Museologist's Perspective on Inclusivity
Authors: Wapner Joseph
Published: March 2016

The author gives a detailed account of a visit to the Seattle Art museum, with observations about audio tours, staff training, signage, audio backgrounds to visual displays, and other exhibit elements. He argues that inclusive design will only come about when underserved  groups are understood “not as targets to be reached but rather as the knowledgeable curators of their own experiences.” Key words: blindness, low vision, museum, inclusive design, museum access, accessibility, Seattle Art Museum
A New Model for Access in the Museum
Authors: Papalia Carmen
Published: March 2016

A blind social practice artist, describes his own work—and play—in and around museums, and volunteers his services as access coordinator to any museum willing to rise to the challenge of his provocations. Key words: Blind artist, social practice art, blind access to museums.
Hearing Architecture: A Review of Bill Fontana's "Sonic Shadows"
Authors: Downey Chris
Published: March 2016

A blind architect reviews a sound installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Since museums are frequently works of art in themselves, the author describes new avenues for architectural appreciation.  Key words: Blindness, blind museum access, Bill Fontana, architecture, sonic aesthetics.
An Inspirational, Fashionable Force: Judith Druck, My Grandmother
Authors: Axel Elisabeth
Published: March 2016

The founder, President and Creative Director of Art Beyond Sight  paints a portrait of her grandmother who inspired her work in this field.  Key words: blind museum access, blindness, blind aesthetics.
Sexy Crips, or, Achieving Full Penetration
Authors: Samuels Ellen
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Review of Access All Areas: Live Art and Disability and M21: From the Medieval to the 21st Century
Authors: Kuppers Petra
Published: March 2016

No abstract available
Hegel, Feminist Philosophy, and Disability: Rereading our History
Authors: Dryden Jane
Published: March 2016

Although feminist philosophers have been critical of the gendered norms contained within the history of philosophy, they have not extended this critical analysis to norms concerning disability. In the history of Western philosophy, disability has often functioned as a metaphor for something that has gone awry. This trope, according to which disability is something that has gone wrong, is amply criticized within Disability Studies, though not within the tradition of philosophy itself or even within feminist philosophy. In this paper, I use one instance of this disability metaphor, contained within a passage from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in order to show that paying attention to disability and disability theory can enable identification of ableist assumptions within the tradition of philosophy and can also open up new interpretations of canonical texts. On my reading, whereas Hegel’s expressed views of disability are dismissive, his logic and its treatment of contingency offer up useful ways to situate and re-evaluate disability as part of the concept of humanity. Disability can in fact be useful to Hegel, especially in the context of his valorization of experiences of disruption and disorientation. Broadening our understanding of the possible ways that the philosophical tradition has conceived human beings allows us to better draw on its theoretical resources.  Keywords: Hegel; contingency; history of philosophy; feminist Hegel scholarship
Vile Sovereigns in Bioethical Debate
Authors: Hall Melinda
Published: March 2016

In this paper, I critically assess transhumanist philosophy and its influence in bioethics by turning to resources in the work of Michel Foucault. I begin by outlining transhumanism and drawing out some of the primary goals of transhumanist philosophy. In order to do so, I focus on the work of Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, two prominent contributors to this thinking. I then move to explicate Foucault’s work, in the early iterations of the Abnormal lecture series, on the concept of vile sovereignty. Foucault used the concept of vile sovereignty to critique psychiatric witnesses that had been utilized in mid twentieth-century French courts of law. Turning back to transhumanism, I analyze transhumanist discourse on the basis of Foucault’s vile sovereignty. Transhumanists promote human enhancement in a way that rejects the body—especially the disabled body—and pose the question of what lives are worth living, as well as attempt to answer it. I conclude that because of the undeserved influence and ableism of transhumanism, it is important for feminist philosophers, philosophers of disability, and other disability scholars, who collide at the nexus of bioethical debate (especially with regard to reproductive technology and the body), to work together to intervene upon transhumanist discourse.   Keywords: bioethics; enhancement; Foucault; transhumanism; ableism
Designing Collective Access: A Feminist Disability Theory of Universal Design
Authors: Hamraie Aimi
Published: March 2016

Universal Design (UD) is a movement to produce built environments that are accessible to a broad range of human variation. Though UD is often taken for granted as synonymous with the best, most inclusive, forms of disability access, the values, methodologies, and epistemologies that underlie UD require closer scrutiny. This paper uses feminist and disability theories of architecture and geography in order to complicate the concepts of "universal" and "design" and to develop a feminist disability theory of UD wherein design is a material-discursive phenomenon that produces both physical environments and symbolic meaning. Furthermore, the paper examines ways in which to conceive UD as a project of collective access and social sustainability, rather than as a strategy targeted toward individual consumers and marketability. A conception of UD that is informed by a politics of interdependence and collective access would address the multiple intersectional forms of exclusion that inaccessible design produces.Keywords: universal design; collective access; interdependence; built environment; feminist theory