Thank you for the update. I hope this isn't too naive a question, but how
do people working in the disabilities field relate to the Berkeley program
(other than as potential degree candidates)? I'm an hour and half away from
the campus, working in a large state-funded program serving a wide spectrum
of developmentally disabled children and adults. The California service
system is currently focusing on issues like self-determination, disabled
people in the criminal justice system (as both perps and victims), the role
of the family in the lives of disabled adults, and how to get people into
real jobs and out of institutional settings (to mention just a few).
Locally I'm worried about community services shutting down and neighborhoods
trying to keep care homes from moving in. We have psychologists, social
workers, and nurses who have little post-graduate contact with academia.
What's the connection between what you're doing and what we're doing?
-Dick Jacobs
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johnson Cheu [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2000 11:31 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: msg from Sue Schweik(was dis studies advice)
>
> All: I'm posting this great good news on behalf of Sue Schweik. I stand
> happily corrected about my alma mater. J
>
> We do have a growing disability studies program at Berkeley now. We've
> been
> working closely with World Institute on Disabilities and are now offering
> a
> regular Intro to Disability Studies course and a Women and Disabilities
> course, both taught by Marsha Saxton, a public policy course taught by
> Fred
> Collignon and three courses in the English dept. being periodically taught
>
> ("Discourses of Disability," "Disability and Literature," and a creative
> writing/digital storytelling workshop on disability arts being co-taught
> by
> Neil Marcus and me next fall).
>
> We're planning the development of an
> anthropology course and working hard to get a history course and future
> FTE. University of California systemwide just granted the Berkeley campus
> a
> 90,000$ grant (the Presidential Chair in Undergraduate Education) for the
> development of disability studies. We're just developing a faculty board,
> having a big lecture series (with Tom Shakespeare and we hope Simi Linton
> as initial speakers), establishing a website, we have a newsletter and an
> office now (464 Wheeler), and we'll have a halftime staff person for the
> next year working to analyze how to make disability studies work on this
> campus.
>
> We're just at the very beginning of the process of establishing a
> full major and/or minor taught by full-time disabled faculty who are
> experts in the field, but we expect to make that happen within five years.
> I've been lurking on the disability research list for a while and for some
>
> reason have had technical trouble getting through the few times I've tried
>
> to make a comment. Devva Kasnitz is a key member of our DisC (Disability
> Studies at Cal) group and maybe she'll respond on the loistserve, but I
> wondered if you might be willing just to follow up your message about the
> failed impulse toward disability studies at Cal with a correction? (I've
> already written to D. Lang about U of Wash separately, we should defintely
>
> pool info and resources between our two institutions.)
>
>
> Johnson Cheu
> [log in to unmask]
> http://people.english.ohio-state.edu/cheu.1
> The Ohio State University
> Dept. of English
> 421 Denney Hall, 164 W. 17th. Ave.
> Columbus, OH 43210
> (614) 292-1730 (Office); (614) 292-6065 (Dept.); (614) 292-7816 (Fax)
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