Best of
Disability-Studies

2010

Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life


Margaret Price - 2010
    We do not know how to abandon the myth of the 'pure (ivory) tower that props up and is propped up by ableist ideology.' . . . Mad at School is thoroughly researched and pathbreaking. . . . The author's presentation of her own experience with mental illness is woven throughout the text with candor and eloquence."---Linda Ware, State University of New York at GeneseoMad at School explores the contested boundaries between disability, illness, and mental illness in the setting of U.S. higher education. Much of the research and teaching within disability studies assumes a disabled body but a rational and energetic (an "agile") mind. In Mad at School, scholar and disabilities activist Margaret Price asks: How might our education practices change if we understood disability to incorporate the disabled mind?Mental disability (more often called "mental illness") is a topic of fast-growing interest in all spheres of American culture, including popular, governmental, aesthetic, and academic. Mad at School is a close study of the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture. Investigating spaces including classrooms, faculty meeting rooms, and job searches, Price challenges her readers to reconsider long-held values of academic life, including productivity, participation, security, and independence. Ultimately, she argues that academic discourse both produces and is produced by a tacitly privileged "able mind," and that U.S. higher education would benefit from practices that create a more accessible academic world.Mad at School is the first book to use a disability-studies perspective to focus on the ways that mental disabilities impact academic culture at institutions of higher education. Individual chapters examine the language used to denote mental disability; the role of "participation" and "presence" in student learning; the role of "collegiality" in faculty work; the controversy over "security" and free speech that has arisen in the wake of recent school shootings; and the marginalized status of independent scholars with mental disabilities. Margaret Price is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College.

I'm Here: Compassionate Communication in Patient Care


Marcus Engel - 2010
    However, the human interaction between patient and care giver is still the essential foundation of healing. “I’m Here” is a personal narrative from the patient’s perspective. Filled with practical advice, packed with humor and overflowing with appreciation, Marcus Engel encourages health care professionals to practice compassionate communications in all its forms.“Marcus’ books and keynote presentation has left an unforgettable impression on our nursing staff. It’s an invaluable reminder of why we do, what we do.”-Dee Evans, Driscoll Children’s Hospital, Corpus Christi, TX“I’m Here” should be required reading for all health practitioners. Marcus’ personal experience of being a patient and his insights into what constitutes compassionate care are marvelous and right on.”-Dr. Norma Stephens Hannigan, Assistant Professor of Clinical Nursing Diplomate of Comprehensive Care, Columbia University in the City of New York. -Professional speaker and author Marcus Engel is considered an expert in communicating the patient’s perspective, and inspiring health care professionals to excellence. Marcus speaks from the heart. After being blinded and suffering catastrophic injuries at the hands of a drunk driver, he endured years of hospitalization, rehab and recovery. Marcus is the author of “After This… An Inspirational Journey for All the Wrong Reasons” and “The Other End of the Stethoscope: 33 Insights for Excellent Patient Care.”

Disability Aesthetics


Tobin Anthony Siebers - 2010
    Along the way, Tobin Siebers revisits the beautiful and the sublime, 'degenerate' art and 'disqualified' bodies, culture wars and condemned neighborhoods, the art of Marc Quinn and the fiction of Junot Díaz---and much, much more. Disability Aesthetics is a stunning achievement, a must-read for anyone interested in how to understand the world we half create and half perceive."---Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Pennsylvania State University"Rich with examples of the disabled body in both historical and modern art, Tobin Siebers's new book explores how disability problematizes commonly accepted ideas about aesthetics and beauty. For Siebers, disability is not a pejorative condition as much as it is a form of embodied difference. He is as comfortable discussing the Venus de Milo as he is discussing Andy Warhol. Disability Aesthetics is a prescient and much-needed contribution to visual & critical studies."---Joseph Grigely, Professor of Visual and Critical Studies, The School of the Art Institute of ChicagoDisability Aesthetics is the first attempt to theorize the representation of disability in modern art and visual culture. It claims that the modern in art is perceived as disability, and that disability is evolving into an aesthetic value in itself. It argues that the essential arguments at the heart of the American culture wars in the late twentieth century involved the rejection of disability both by targeting certain artworks as "sick" and by characterizing these artworks as representative of a sick culture. The book also tracks the seminal role of National Socialism in perceiving the powerful connection between modern art and disability. It probes a variety of central aesthetic questions, producing a new understanding of art vandalism, an argument about the centrality of wounded bodies to global communication, and a systematic reading of the use put to aesthetics to justify the oppression of disabled people. In this richly illustrated and accessibly written book, Tobin Siebers masterfully demonstrates the crucial roles that the disabled mind and disabled body have played in the evolution of modern aesthetics, unveiling disability as a unique resource discovered by modern art and then embraced by it as a defining concept.Tobin Siebers is V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature and Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His many books include Disability Theory and The Subject and Other Subjects: On Ethical, Aesthetic, and Political Identity.A volume in the series Corporealities: Discourses of Disability

100 Questions & Answers about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd) in Women and Girls


Patricia O. Quinn - 2010
    100 Questions & Answers About Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) In Women And Girls Provides Authoritative, Practical Answers To Common Questions About This Disorder. Written By A Renowned ADHD Specialist, This Book Presents Important Information About Common Symptoms, The Diagnosis Process, Management, And Sources Of Support For Women And Girls With ADHD. An Invaluable Resource, This Book Provides The Necessary Tools For Anyone Coping With The Emotional Turmoil Caused By ADHD.

The Myth of the Normal Curve


Curt Dudley-Marling - 2010
    This idea underpins much educational theory, research, and practice. There is, however, a considerable body of research demonstrating that the normal curve grossly misrepresents the human experience. Yet the acceptance of the normal curve continues to be used to pathologize children and adults with disabilities by positioning them as abnormal. Collectively, the contributors to this volume critique the ideology of the normal curve. Some explicitly challenge the assumptions that underpin the normal curve. Others indirectly critique notions of normality by examining the impact of normal curve thinking on educational policies and practices. Many contributors go beyond critiquing the normal curve to propose alternative ways to imagine human differences. All contributors agree that the hegemony of the normal curve has had a devastating effect on those presumed to live on the boundaries of normal.

The Irregular School: Exclusion, Schooling and Inclusive Education


Roger Slee - 2010
    Key international organisations such as UNESCO and OECD declare their commitment to Education for All and the principles and practice of inclusive education. There is no doubt that despite this respectability inclusive education is hotly contested and generates intense debate amongst teachers, parents, researchers and policy-makers. People continue to argue over the nature and extent of inclusion.The Irregular School explores the foundations of the current controversies and argues that continuing to think in terms of the regular school or the special school obstructs progress towards inclusive education. The book contends that we need to build a better understanding of exclusion, of the foundations of the division between special and regular education, and of school reform as a precondition for more inclusive schooling in the future. Schooling ought to be an apprenticeship in democracy and inclusion is a prerequisite of a democratic education.The Irregular School builds on existing research and literature to argue for a comprehensive understanding of exclusion, a more innovative and aggressive conception of inclusive education and a genuine commitment to school reform that steps aside from the troubled and troubling notions of regular schools and special schools. It will be of interest to all those working and researching in the field of inclusive education.

Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction


Dan Goodley - 2010
    The book discusses the global nature of disability studies and disability politics, introduces key debates in the field and represents the intersections of disability studies with feminism, queer, and postcolonial theory. The book has a clear and coherent format which matches the interdisciplinary framework of disability studies - including chapters on sociology, critical psychology, discourse analysis, psychoanalysis and education. Each chapter engages with important areas of analysis such as the individual, society, community, and education to explore the realities of oppression experienced by disabled people and to develop the possibilities for addressing it.

The Autism Matrix: The Social Origins of the Autism Epidemic


Gil Eyal - 2010
    Once you begin to look for it, you realize it is everywhere. Why? We all know the answer or think we do: there is an autism epidemic. And if it is an epidemic, then we know what must be done: lots of money must be thrown at it, detection centers must be established and explanations sought, so that the number of new cases can be brought down and the epidemic brought under control. But can it really be so simple? This major new book offers a very different interpretation. The authors argue that the recent rise in autism should be understood an "aftershock" of the real earthquake, which was the deinstitutionalization of mental retardation in the mid-1970s. This entailed a radical transformation not only of the institutional matrix for dealing with developmental disorders of childhood, but also of the cultural lens through which we view them. It opened up a space for viewing and treating childhood disorders as neither mental illness nor mental retardation, neither curable nor incurable, but somewhere in-between. The authors show that where deinstitutionalization went the furthest, as in Scandinavia, UK and the "blue" states of the US, autism rates are also highest. Where it was absent or delayed, as in France, autism rates are low. Combining a historical narrative with international comparison, The Autism Matrix offers a fresh and powerful analysis of a condition that affects many parents and children today.

The Paradox of Disability: Responses to Jean Vanier and L'Arche Communities from Theology and the Sciences


Hans S. Reinders - 2010
    In 2007 the impressive group of social scientists and theologians who contribute to this book gathered there to respond to a question posed by the worldwide community’s cofounder, Jean Vanier: “What have people with disabilities taught me?”Editor Hans Reinders emphasizes that the purpose of these analyses and reflections is not to set those with disabilities apart. He explains that it is not their being disabled that makes them special, but rather that sharing their experience enables us to see things that we otherwise readily ignore — and to understand the fullness of what it means to be human.

Music, Disability, and Society


Alex Lubet - 2010
    How musicians can be disabled and how musicality itself can be disabling