I know someone mentioned that they were trying to start up a disability
studies program possibly at U of Washington. We are having some articles
written about the conference we are planning and the reporters are looking
to speak to people on the west coast who are in the process of starting or
have started disability studies programs at different college or
universities along the west coast. If you would not mind being contacted
for the article please let me know!
Thank you,
Anne Cohen
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Portland State University's (Portland, Oregon) Diverse Abilities: Issues in
Higher Education conference presented by; American Disability Act Compliance
Committee, The Office of Affirmative Action, Students with Disabilities
Union, The Multicultural Center, The PSU Alumni Association and Office of
Disability Student Services will be held on May 4th 2000 from 9 A.M. - 5 P.M
in Smith Memorial Center. The conference is free and open to anyone
including community members who would like to attend. The conference will
include workshops on things such as; physical access issues, workplace
accommodations, disability activism movement, assistive technology and
ergonomic tools, hidden disabilities, and much more. Several workshops will
also examine disabilities from a cultural perspective.
Our keynote speaker, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, is an Associate Professor of
English from Howard University; she will be discussing the recently
developed academic field of Disability Studies. Rosemarie Garland Thomson is
an established writer/scholar/speaker in the field of cultural studies. Her
published work on disability studies includes, Extraordinary Bodies:
Figuring Physical Disability in American culture and Literature and
Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Bodies. Garland-Thomson
incorporates cultural studies, Women Studies, and Ethnic Studies, and
similar theories into the academic study of disabilities. Garland-Thomson's
scholarship, along with others in her growing field, aims to challenge the
way society views people with disabilities. By having her as our keynote
speaker at our conference, we hope to change the way people at our
university view people with disabilities and the way people with
disabilities view themselves. Garland-Thomson's work is crucial to creating
a paradigm where society views disabilities as an additional set of issues
from which strength can be drawn. This is similar to the way that
scholarship on gays and lesbians, people of color, and women has questioned
the way they are viewed within a normative culture and worked to define
their identities from a positive standpoint.
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