Village Voice: "Is disability studies academia's next frontier?"

[DemBones DemBones]

Lest America divide too neatly into red/blue, NASCAR/latte blocs, one constituency can be counted on to muck up the dichotomy. People with disabilities defy political pigeonholing. The group considers itself an oppressed minority, and its civil rights agenda grew out of 1960s radicalism. But on issues such as euthanasia, disabled people find themselves allied with "culture of life" enthusiasts. As disability activist Simi Linton says, "A lot of disabled people justifiably feel vulnerable to ideas held by their family and the medical establishment that our lives are less valuable. . . . That is why I'm categorically opposed to physician- assisted suicide, because I think some people are more likely to be assisted than others." For secularists, this argument is a bit harder to dismiss than "because God said so."

Now disabled people have gotten into the business of problematizing: Disability studies has arrived in academia. Of course, the medical study of disability is long-standing, but the new approach establishes an interdisciplinary field on the model of women's, queer, and ethnic studies. Linton, author of the upcoming My Body Politic (Michigan), explains: "The curriculum had traditionally housed disability in a very sequestered area—how to fix people and take care of them. Disability studies is us looking out at the world and seeing how that looks to us." It also critiques "how disability is represented in all kinds of texts—in literature, film, the annals of history."

The Society for Disability Studies (SDS) was founded in 1982, with an emphasis on social science. In the early 1990s, scholars working independently in the humanities began to discover each other's work at SDS conferences. Linton, whose legs were paralyzed in a car accident in 1971, describes these conferences as "quite chaotic. You've got 50 people who use wheelchairs, you've got blind people with dogs, you've got deaf people with interpreters. . . . And we all sort of move to accommodate each other. It's a powerful experience for outsiders coming in for the first time."

<snip>

Disability scholars aim to revolutionize the way disability is imagined in our culture. Rather than pathologizing individuals, they ask how society accommodates different bodies (or doesn't). Disability, they point out, highlights the dynamic nature of identity itself: Entry into the disabled community could be a matter of an overlooked stop sign or the emergence of a lurking gene.

more. . .

http://villagevoice.com/arts/0531,education5,66456,12.html

The MLA (Modern Language Association) has approved disability studies as a field of study, FWIW.

I think you all will like this article. Maybe we should drop the VV a note to thank them for noticing us?

[undergroundpanther]

1. About time

Iwonder if they'll discover"normal" is the result of social engineering
and quit tyring to make everyone be the same?

[u4ic]

2. This is great, thanks for posting

[KamaAina]

3. My book reviews will be in the next Review of Disability Studies

a quarterly published at the Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawai'i, Manoa.

http://www.rds.hawaii.edu/

In order to address the need for an internationally-focused academic journal in the field of Disability Studies, the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa is pleased to announce the publication of, “The Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal” (RDS). RDS was founded in 2003 by the late Dr. David Pfeiffer.

Now if they'd just offer a disability studies major. It's bad enough to have to go anywhere on the mainland for one, but really, Illinois-Chicago is simply too cold for human habitation. Been there, done that.

[pop goes the weasel]

4. I thought you might be affiliated with them

My only contact with Dr. Pfeiffer was a brief (positive) email exchange regarding a WSS conference. Did you know him personally? I've wondered what he was like in person.

[KamaAina]

5. Amazingly, I never met him

I am only loosely affiliated with UH, having served on a conference program committee as well as writing the reviews, but in a place this small, you expect to run across everyone sooner or later.