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DISABILITY-RESEARCH  November 2004

DISABILITY-RESEARCH November 2004

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Subject:

Re: On teaching Reeve, Shakespeare and Johnson

From:

"Lillie,Timothy H" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Lillie,Timothy H

Date:

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 13:46:57 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (202 lines)

I agree. This is a very interesting discussion. I recall (at an SDS
conference a few years ago) hearing someone ruefully say at lunch that
the discussion group he was in would not take anything he said seriously
*because* as he reported, there seemed general agreement that a white
male could have nothing serious to say. I am sorry to say I cannot
recall who this was.

My question, then and now is: "How do they know what you know about
disability?"  

At a later conference, during a panel session, one of the people there
suggested that the panelist who happens to have a visible disability
speak first on the grounds that "Disabled people have important things
to tell us because of their disability," to which another person pulled
out an asthsma inhaler and asked: "How do you know who has a
disability?"

Some may consider asthsma to be a "minor" condition, but I consider
breathing to be, in ADA terms, "a major life activity."

The point of course (in this discussion of identity politics) is that
jumping to conclusions about people and what they have to say or offer
regarding disability issues dilutes and limits the discussion, instead
of enriching it.

Timothy Lillie, PhD
Associate Professor
The University of Akron
Zook Hall 322
Akron OH 55325-4205
330-972-6746 (voice)
330-972-5209 (fax



-----Original Message-----
From: The Disability-Research Discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of slamp1
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 10:26 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: On teaching Reeve, Shakespeare and Johnson


Hello Mark,

One strategy for further exploring the role of identity in disability
writings might be to compare student interpretations of works under
different understandings of identity. For example, how would the student
below have read Johnson's work if she believed Johnson to be disabled?
Is more or less credibility given to those who have apparent
disabilities vs. non-apparent disabilities? How might length of lived
disability experience affect the perceived expertise of disability
authors and speakers? How might association with disabled people as
clients vs. comrades and colleagues affect perceptions of disability
credibility?

A way to make this interesting could be to split the class into groups
and give each group different information about the disability identity
of the author of a particular reading. Then compare the conclusions
reached by each group in regards to the influence of the believed
disability identity and their perceptions of the author's credibility.

Thank you for sharing these very interesting discussions that are taking
place in your disability studies classes! I love these topics you are
covering!

Sharon Lamp
Graduate Assistant-Great Lakes ADA Center
Ph.D. Student-Disability Studies
University of Illinois at Chicago



>===== Original Message From Mark Sherry <[log in to unmask]> ===== 
>Hi
>
>I am currently teaching two undergraduate disability courses at The
University of Toledo where the topic of discussion has sometimes been
Christopher Reeve.  The results have been fascinating, and I would like
to share them with you.
>
>In one, a group of students did a research project on Reeve and also 
>the
criticisms which Mary Johnson has made in her book, Make Them Go Away.
This discussion occurred two weeks before Reeve died. One of the
disabled students in my class argued that Reeve was the most famous
disabled person alive, and that she understood Johnson is a nondisabled
person, and that this impacted on the way she read Johnson's criticisms
of Reeve.  She felt that Reeve's lived, embodied experience of
impairment and disability gave him more credibility in these debates
than Johnson, who she understood was nondisabled. This was bringing an
issue associated with identity politics into the "cure" debate -- and
that is something we have not discussed much so far on this list. She
added that she felt that Johnson's likening of Reeve to Clint Eastwood,
who has waged a pulblic battle against the ADA, was also unfair, given
the support which Reeve gave to a number of disability organisations
that addresse!
>d both
> disability and impairment - such as the National Organization on 
>Disability
and the Spinal Cord Injury Association. She also discussed the comments
Reeve made at a Democratic Convention about disability rights.
>
>Another student said that a rights movement such as the disability 
>movement
can often experience a conflict between minority and majority rights. So
for instance, she likened a person who chooses to work as a "freak" and
another who chooses to abort a disabled fetus, as two individuals who
might be pursuing their own rights, even though they might conflict with
the broader rights of other disabled people. I wonder if this is a topic
that often comes up in other discussions about these issues?
>
>Another interesting thread of the discussion involved the
impairment/disability distinction.
>What my class discussed was this - even accepting the social model as 
>simply
a heuristic device - that a thorough discussion about either prevention
or cure cannot be conducted in the absence of a sociology of impairment
as well as a sociology of disablement. In this regard, they found a
number of social issues (such as war, poverty, domestic violence) where
it seemed rather unproblematic to them to argue for prevention of
impairment... and of course, disability scholars in general work for the
prevention of disability.
>
>Another week, the class discussed the large numbers of D/deaf people 
>who have
chosen to have cochlear implants as a problematic development in the
"cure" debate. In the US,  national Deaf organisations originally
regarded these implants as a form of eugenics, but more and more Deaf
people have come to regard them as similar to a prosthetic, rather than
a cure - or a "cure" that did not take their D/deaf identity away. So
they seemed to believe that issues of identity were more complex than
some of the discussions of "cure" might have us believe.
>In these discussions, the students in my class seemed to find that the
rhetoric which sometimes pervades activist discussion of these issues
rather shallow.
>
>Within a week of one of these classes, Reeve died, and I personally was
really disappointed that few American scholars expressed the sadness
about his passing that Tom Shakespeare did. Almost immediately,
attention was diverted to a discussion of the media representation of
Reeve's death, rather than any genuine empathy for the loss of a life. I
was personally sad to hear that he had died, but also sad that there
seemed little  empathy for Reeve as a human being.
>
>Another class I taught actually engaged with Tom Shakespeare's work - 
>and
many students were incredibly impressed by his balanced and careful
approach to these issues. In fact, they probably related better to his
work than many other scholars they examined. He offers careful analysis,
rather than diatribes, and they were impressed by that. His work really
did seem to challenge them to move beyond the binaries. I wonder what
other teachers have experienced in their classrooms? Have your students
had similar reactions? What teaching techniques or strategies have you
used to engage them in these discussions?
>
>Cheers
>Mark
>
>
>
>Mark Sherry
>Ability Center of Toledo Endowed Chair in Disability Studies University

>of Toledo University Hall, Room 2100
>Mail Stop 920
>Toledo, Ohio 43606-3390
>
>Phone: 419 530 7245 (w) 419 297 7026 (cell)
>Fax 419 530 7238
>email: [log in to unmask]
>
>---------------------------------
> ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
>
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