Dr. Eske Wollrad
03.Dez.2009, 19.00 Uhr, Melanchthonianum, Hörsaal XX, Uniplatz 8/9, Halle

Queere Bewegungen und Theorien, die auf die Dekonstruktion vermeintlich biologisch bestimmter Geschlechter und Sexualitäten zielen, haben nicht nur große Begeisterung ausgelöst, sondern auch kritische Stimmen auf den Plan gerufen. Heute kommen diese nicht mehr nur aus der traditionellen Genderforschung, sondern ebenso aus postkolonialer Theorie wie aus den Disability Studies, die die Normativität des „zeitweise Nicht-Behindertseins“ (temporarlily able-bodiedness – TAB) problematisieren.

Der Vortrag behandelt zum einen die Gemeinsamkeiten der Queer sowie der Critical Whiteness Studies. Der zweite Teil diskutiert die Unterschiede zwischen beiden und die „weißen Flecken“ der Queer Theorien. Im letzten Teil werden grundlegende Kritikpunkte an Queer seitens der Disability Studies vorgestellt, die verdeutlichen, dass sich normative Vorstellungen hinsichtlich des „doing gender“ nur auf in bestimmter Weise konstruierte Körper beziehen.

Weitere Informationen zu Eske Wollrad und ausgewählten Veröffentlichungen findet ihr unter Terminplan.

To my fellow homebodies,

If you, like me, have found yourself reluctantly addicted to FOX’s high school dramedy Glee, then you know that this week’s episode shined its bemused spotlight the show’s wheelchair-riding, background singing Artie Abrams. The character has raised the ire of some disability advocates because he’s played by a nondisabled actor. But what strikes me as far more egregious than the casting is the degree of misguided, even degrading sympathy the episode points Artie’s way. When the glee club hesitates to help raise money for a bus that could accommodate Artie’s wheelchair, the director insists the students “learn a lesson” by using wheelchairs for at least three hours a day, you know, so they can understand what it’s “really” like to be disabled.

This violence of viewing the disabled as “weaker” or “afflicted” is one of the central critiques of the emerging discipline of disability studies. The highlight of the episode, for me anyway, was an early sequence where Artie wheels around the high school singing Billy Idol’s “Dancin’ With Myself.” (Watch the clip for yourself here.) What makes the scene so surprisingly sublime is the way the boundary between body and apparatus blur, much in the way Petra Kuppers describes in her wonderful essay, “The Wheelchair’s Rhetoric” (you can download it here, with the kind permission of Professor Kuppers.) Artie’s joyful ability to dance within and with his wheelchair (thanks in part to stunt double and wheelchair athlete Aaron Fotheringham) begins to expose the pernicious norms inherent in the very term “disabled” and re-cast Artie as an artist, much more so than the wheelchair minstrelsy that ends the episode.

All of which I say by way of introducing a valuable resource for the digitally-inclined: The Disability History Museum. The archive includes both documents and images, like the 1933 advertisement below.

You can also read an 1863 article from Scientific American, “The Great Lilliputian Wedding,” noting the marriage of the performing pair Charles S. Stratton, a.k.a. “General Tom Thumb,” and Lavinia Warren. As the author dimly advocates, “It is generally admitted, we believe, that these little people have as good a right to marry as the larger folks.”

And be sure to check out this videography of physical disabilities on film from the 1920 silent The Penalty (watch an excerpt here) to 2007’s Diving Bell and the Butterfly. And for a more political take, listen to the oral histories collected at UC Berkeley’s Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement site.

Until next time.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen

As I wrote back in April, fundraisers that “arrest” and “jail” volunteers for fundraising purposes are tasteless and outrageous.  Imagine my shock and dismay when I arrived at church this morning to find that the rector  has agreed to have a “warrant” put out for a fundraiser for Muscular Dystrophy Association (aka “Jerry’s Kids”)  hosted by a local restaurant.  I was so angry I wanted to say something during the announcements portion of the service but decided to hold my tongue and come up with a more coherent, constructive reaction to this.  So, here goes:

Dear Rev.

I am very disappointed to find that you have agreed to participate in the Jail and Bail fundraiser for MDA. Please understand that this is not an objection to the idea of helping out children with disabilities.  However, there are two major  problems with this fundraiser.  First of all is the whole notion of “jailing” someone for fun — sorry, but I fail to see anything funny about incarceration.  I’m sure you are aware of the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his own home last summer, as well as the  experience of my colleague Ravi Shankar, who was arrested for “driving while brown” following a poetry event in Manhattan earlier this year. Unfortunately, this kind of racial profiling is all too common in America, and is part of the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination you spoke about so eloquently in your sermon today.  An event that makes fun of those who are wrongly imprisoned is, in my opinion, incredibly tasteless and insensitive.  When I was in high school, we had senior “slave auctions” for fundraisers.  Teachers wisely told us that these were offensive.  I consider “jail and bail” fundraisers to be just as outrageous.

The secondary issue has to do with the perspective on disability presented by the MDA, aka “Jerry’s Kids.” A number of disability rights activists have spoken out against Mr. Lewis’ work which tends to stigmatize persons with disabilities by making them into objects of pity.  This type of marginalization is perpetuated by the phrase in the fundraiser which calls neurodegenerative diseases “crimes.” For more on this issue, see the website The Trouble with Jerry: Pity Isn’t Progress.

I will leave it to you to decide whether to share these views with the congregation and/or continue to participate in the fundraiser.  I just thought I would let my views be known to you in the hope to educate you on these issues.

via Disability Studies, Temple U.

Just in time for my senior seminar on Disability History!

via Our Bodies Our Blog.  According to their About section:

“FWD/Forward is a group blog written by feminists with disabilities. It is a place to discuss disability issues and the intersection between feminism and disability rights activism. The content here ranges from basic information which is designed to introduce people who are new to disability issues or feminism to some core concepts, to more advanced topics, with the goal of promoting discussion, conversation, fellowship, and education.”

In short, disability is a feminist issue.  Right on!

Disability Studies theorist Lennard Davis presenting presenting about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).  Unfortunately the sound quality is a little bit low, but if you turn up your volume, you can learn some interesting thoughts about different disability models (charity modell, medical modell, social modell), and more…

–>> video link….

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-5195985402117909707&ei=-23USrLlF6Sk2AKOsNyyCg&q=lennard+j.+davis&hl=de#

“Since each of us is or is going to become disabled if we live long enough, it is vital that notions of disability stay with us.”
— Tanya Titchkosky

I just listened to this interview with Tany Titchkowsky*.

As Disability studies is a discipline, that moves away from the medical model toward an examination of the social responses to disability, Tanya Titchkosky argues that disability can teach us about the disabling structures of society. She further talks about how cultures produce images of disability and asks: do we confirm, remake or resist these images?

Titchkosky argues that disability can and should be a ‘teacher’ to, and about, non-disabled or ‘temporarily abled’ society

Here you can listen to the whole interview (ca. 30 minutes)!

* Professor Tanya Titchkosky is an assistant DISABILITY STUDIES professor in the Department of SOCIOLOGY AND EQUITY STUDIES (Disability Studies) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. She is the author of these two books:

“Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment
(University of Toronto Press, 2007)

and

“Disability, Self and Society
(University of Toronto Press, 2003)

Excerpt of an interview with Carol Gill*:

Here is the link to the video!

*Carol Gill:
Director of Graduate Studies & PhD in Disabilities
Center Director, Chicago Center for Disability Research
Executive Officer, Society for Disability Studies Office

Bio
Carol J. Gill, Ph.D. is the Director of Graduate Studies & PhD in Disabilities and a clinical and research psychologist specializing in health and disability. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she teaches and provides leadership in disability studies curriculum development. She also directs the department’s Chicago Center for Disability Research, through which she and colleagues conduct research, training and community service projects in the social sciences, emphasizing a disability studies approach and substantive direction by persons with disabilities at all levels. Since 1998, Dr. Gill has served as the Executive Officer of the Society for Disability Studies.

Research Interests
Dr. Gill’s research interests include disability identity development, health concerns and health service experiences of women with disabilities, disability bioethical issues and professional training. Her conceptual and research articles have been widely published in both professional journals and in the popular disability press.

The german newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung” published a review on Tobin Siebers’ latest book and on Christian Mürner’s and Udo Sierck’s Book about the “Krüppelzeitung. Here’s the article…

via Disability Studies, Temple U.:

Brilliant article.  The comments are even better [okay, some of them are disablist but others are right on].  No wonder the folks across the pond think Americans are clueless.  I hope Penny will send me a button.

Logo at left is from the disability rights advocacy group Not Dead Yet.  Yes, they got their name from the following priceless bit from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

via The Trouble with Spikol. There’s a donut shop in Northern California that uses mental illness and an insane asylum as it’s theme. Here’s a sampling of news stories from Fox News,  AOL, and  ABC News. In addition to naming donuts after various mental illnesses and brain conditions (e.g. “bipolar donut” and “massive head trauma,” the latter of which has incensed veterans groups), the store also has a “padded cell” and “group therapy room” where one can consume the donuts, and offers customers the chance to be photographed in a straightjacket.  What fun (not)!

What annoys me the most is that the company calls itself  “progressive” — sorry, if you don’t get why persons with mental illness and mental health advocates are offended, you’re not progressive.  Would you have a donut called “little black Sambo”?  I don’t think so.

Liz argues that there are more important things to be concerned about than donuts.  But isn’t battling stigma and fighting for better health care, legal rights, and so forth all part of the same movement?  Here’s an excellent article from Stigmanet that puts this is in the context of campus mental health issues.

So, q’est-ce que c’est? (what is it) — offensive marketing campaign or not?

Added later:  more on protests, from Media Dis&Dat.

We recently found a prior announcement to a lecture course by Prof. Dr. phil., Dipl.-Psych. Dietrich Eggert (Institut für Sonderpädagogik, philosophische Fakultät) at Leibniz University Hannover on the “Psychology of Uglyness”. We haven’t found any further information on content and results, yet. But it seems, that there are at least some parallels to our research topics, since Eggert’s lecture strikes some of the important questions about the aesthetics of disability, e.g.: Beauty and Uglyness as preconditions  for  judging on  other people. Or Disabling conditions in communication.

Since we are mainly focusing on the correlation, the impact and the relevance of demographic and socio-cultural categories (especially concerning aspects of disability) on form and practice of design (process), as well as its effects on usage and practical use of design within these categories, it is important to us, to define the relevance of the scientific approach of disability studies to design research (and vice versa).

In this context Carol Gill’s** answers to the FAQs on disability studies help a lot to summarize what disability studies are (and are not) about, which makes the parallels and tasks to our research project obvious and understandable.

Carol Gill’s thoughts about what disability studies is about, have been translated and summarized by Bifos e.V into german. In deep appreciation of their work, we would like to quote an excerpt:

“1. Grundlage von Forschung und Lehre der Disability Studies ist das soziale Modell von Behinderung. Behinderung wird hierbei nicht als ein festgeschriebenes individuelles Merkmal sondern als sozial verliehener Status verstanden.

2. Was Behinderung ist, wird in jeder Gesellschaft durch ein komplexes Zusammenspiel politischer, ökonomischer Kräfte und kultureller Werte festgelegt. Die Disability Studies sind interdisziplinär, d.h. dass die Konstruktion von Behinderung nicht nur aus dem Blickwinkel von Pädagog/inne/n oder Mediziner/inne/n sondern auch aus der Sicht anderer Fachrichtungen wie z.B. Soziologie, Jura, Geschichts-, Literatur-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturwissenschaften untersucht wird.

3. Auch wenn sich manche Disability Studies Untersuchungen möglicherweise auf eine bestimmte Art von Behinderung konzentrieren, arbeiten die Disability Studies (als Schlussfolgerung aus dem sozialen Modell von Behinderung) grundsätzlich mit einem behinderungsübergreifenden Ansatz.

4. Der Fokus liegt in erster Linie nicht auf dem Individuum selbst sondern auf dem sozialen/politischen/ökonomischen/kulturellen Kontext in dem Behinderung steht und der die Erfahrungen und das Leben von Menschen mit Behinderung prägt.

5. Das Ziel von Disability Studies liegt nicht in der Vermeidung, Verbesserung oder Heilung einer Beeinträchtigung sondern in der kritischen Analyse der sozialen Prozesse von Behinderung. Diese Analyse soll nicht zu Erkenntnissen über die Korrektur des behinderten Menschen oder seiner Körperlichkeit führen sondern Wege aus unterdrückerischen, ausgrenzenden sozialen Systemen und Prozessen aufzeigen.

6. Disability Studies thematisieren die schon lange währende soziale Unterdrückung der Gemeinschaft behinderter Menschen, und sollen sowohl die Verbände behinderter Menschen wie auch einzelne Betroffene stärken. Forschung und Lehre müssen die Sichtweisen behinderter Menschen in ihren Mittelpunkt stellen.” *

In the same Article it is being defined, what disability studies is NOT.
Again we would like to quote on the german translation of Bifos:

Demnach werden Forschung, Lehre und/oder Projekte dann nicht als Disability Studies bezeichnet,

“1. wenn der Zustand oder das Funktionieren eines Menschen stärker im Blickfeld der Auseinandersetzung steht als der sozialpolitische Kontext in dem der behinderte Mensch lebt.

2. wenn das Ziel der Forschung / der Veranstaltung / des Projektes eher in der Heilung, Verhinderung oder Veränderung einer Beeinträchtigung als in der Veränderung behindernder Sozialsysteme oder –strukturen liegt.

3. wenn die Arbeit eher körperliche oder psychische Aspekte als Forschungsgegenstand herausgreift statt die komplexen Beziehungen zwischen dem Phänomen der Behinderung und beeinflussenden gesellschaftlichen Faktoren zu betrachten.

4. wenn die Sichtweisen behinderter Menschen keinen Einfluss auf die Arbeit haben.” *

* The two lists we cited, were found on disability-studies-deutschland.de, a project by bifos.org

**The lists have been summarized and translated (by bifos) in orientation to: Gill, Carol: Disability Studies: Looking at the FAQ`s. In: Alert. Newsletter of the Institute on Disability Studies and Human Development. University of Illinois at Chicago. Volume 9 (3), Spring 1998

On thursday, 13th of august, we will do a co-design-workshop with deaf kids at the StreetLab.
Together in playfull workshops, we are going to explore the properties of deaf communication. Furthermore we will develop expedient and sensible product- and service ideas.

The workshop takes place in collaboration with SINNESWANDEL (Berliner Gesellschaft zur Förderung gehörloser und hörgeschädigter Menschen).

Download Deaf StreetLab flyer!
Check out the full programm of workshops on www.street-lab.info!

Tobin Siebers names LeCorbusier’s “Modulor” as an example for a political unconscious architectural theory. Siebers recognizes here a basis of what Rob Imrie (also known as the co-author of the book: “Inclusive Design: Designing and Developing Accessible Environments“) calls the “design appartheid”* of the modernist architectural practice. A practice, that unavoidably leads to (at least temporary) exclusion of (e.g. young, old,…) people. 

[LeCorbusier's Le Modulor - Body Proportions as a benchmark: 6 feet high, male, musculous, without evidence of bodily or mentally impairment]

___
Imrie’s term “design apartheid”, dealing with building form and design in western culture that are inscribed with the values of an able-bodied” society, is further described in:

* Siebers, Tobin: “Disability Studies”, Michigan Press ,2008; pg 86

* Imrie, Rob: “Oppression, Disability and Access in the Built Environment” in:
Shakespeare, Tom: “The Disability Reader”, Continuum, 2000; pg 129

Another insightful post from Tenured Radical — I guess my nagging about the word “crazy” worked!

It’s amazing to me why wealthy liberal arts colleges like Zenith have fewer resources for students with disabilities than state universities.  Is this an extension of benefits offered in public K-12 schools?  Or veterans benefits (we are seeing a number of returning veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan)?

Speaking of K-12 education, here’s a story from today’s Wall Street Journal about efforts to ban use of restraint in public schools, after the GAO found hundreds of allegations of death and abuse since 1990. Who would have thought a student with disabilities would be safter in a locked psychiatric facility than a public school?

…well, we do not want to promise too many book reviews…, but anyway:
we are looking forward to take a closer look on this one:

Disability/Postmodernity
Embodying Disability Theory
Edited by Mairin Corker and Tom Shakespeare

In Tobin Siebers’ Paper we mentioned earlier (see also the description of our colloquium’s talk in the dates section)

, he gives an introductory definition of Disability Aesthetics:

“What I am calling disability aesthetics names a critical concept that seeks to emphasize the presence of disability in the tradition of aesthetic representation. Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body— and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty—as the sole determination of the aesthetic. It is not a matter of representing the exclusion of disability from aesthetic history, since such an exclusion has not taken place, but of making the influence of disability obvious. This goal may take two forms: 1) to establish disability as a critical framework that questions the presuppositions underlying definitions of aesthetic production and appreciation; 2) to establish disability as a significant value in itself worthy of future development.”

(Siebers, Tobin. What Can Disability Studies Learn from the Culture Wars? Cultural Critique – 55, Fall 2003, pp. 182-216)

via Feminist Law Professors.  So Sarah Palin resigned, so does she deserve this?  I think not.  It’s not just the doods doing this.  See Maureen Dowd in today’s NYT.

For a nice commentary on the sexism and ableism in all this, see this post from Women’s Health News.

As Tom Shakespeare (PEALS, University of Newcastle, UK) mentioned in his talk at Vienna University (9 may 2008), the www offers various opportunities for social integration to bodily or mentlly impaired people. The communication through the internet offers chances of communication free off prejudices and other social barriers, which enables a lot of people to foster autonomy and empowerment.

In our research we lay one focus on the imagery and reprasantation of disability in virtual reality (as well as in the world of mass media and pop culture), to figure out different reasons for and relationships of showing and hiding disability.  

we therefore collect and analyse images in advertisment, movie, literature, but also in computer gaming and virtual worlds such as SECOND LIFE….

[picture: second life; found through: net.educause.edu]

Media dis&dat: AMA says there’s no more need to research link between vaccines, autism.

Because there isn’t one!  The real danger is that vaccine rates have dropped to the point where childhood diseases are reappearing. I hope this puts the issue to rest, but given the tenacity of crackpot erroneous theories on the Web, I doubt it.

If folks are really interested in helping persons with autism, how about helping teens and adults get a college education?

In her recent TED talk, record-breaking Aimee Mullins (paralympic games 1996), who is also known as an actress and model, talks not only about how her high-tech legs are giving her super-powers, but takes that as an example to a discussion about technolocial effort that is giving us potential to even be superabled, to become architects of our identities or change our identities. A discussion about what the body can be…

(Here is her talk from 1998).

Yesterday’s New York Times reported on a newly released Nixon tape that reveals the president’s private thoughts on abortion.  Although the President made no public statements about the Roe v. Wade decision, he made the following private statements on January 22, 1973, the day the decision was handed down (audio file here):

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases — like interracial pregnancies, he said.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

I’m somewhat surprised that Nixon supported abortion at all.  Yet, I’m not as surprised as others that he supported neoeugenics — i.e. selective reduction of births of “undesirables.” As Rebecca Kluchin demonstrates in her excellent new book, Fit to Be Tied, forced sterilization of poor women, especially women of color, continued well into the later half of the twentieth century, at the same time that more privileged white women were asserting their rights to reproductive self-determination.  So, Nixon’s views, while certainly bigoted and abhorrent, were similar to the views of some population control experts who saw limiting reproduction as a solution to the “culture of poverty”.