 |
 |
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! > >________________End of message______________________ > >Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now >located at: > >www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html > >You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page. ________________End of message______________________ Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page. ________________End of message______________________ Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.