Tug of WT The Hunt for Disability Culture in Higher Education SIHO Brussels Dr. Linda Ware SUNY Geneseo.

Tug of WT

The Hunt for Disability Culture in Higher

Education

SIHO Brussels

Dr. Linda WareSUNY Geneseo

It is the participants in a culture who give meaning to people, objects, and events . . . .

It is by our use of things, and what we say, think, and feel about them—how we represent them—that we give them a meaning.

Stuart Hall (1997)

Lecture informed by

• SUNY Geneseo Courses• “Bodies that Matter”

Women’s Studies• “Disability in America”

Writing seminar• “Arts, Careers in the

Community” • School of Education

Curriculum course

• Temple University Philadelphia, PA

• project evaluator• “Ensuring Higher

Education for All”• Three year federally

funded project 2008-11

• David T. Mitchell, PI

Visible markers of disability abound in the built environment of the modern college campus

I

ACCESS to the curriculum is not a mandated reform and it will likely prove to be a greater challenge than physical access.

Although ACCESS to the built environment is mandated on college campuses in the US— compliance remains a contested issue.

Within Higher Education Curriculum

Disability resides in disciplines that have historically assumed “treatment” approaches to disability and pedagogies that privilege normalization.

Psychology, sociology, education, and medicine, all are locations that emphasize “treatment” and “repair” of the “problem” of disability.

Text from a former student during his biology lecture

My bio professor just referred to a person with MS as a “defective”

SUNY Geneseo

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Email from a colleague in the psychology department

What is the proper usage for mental retardation these days? When I said it this way in class, one of your former students corrected me saying, usage was now either cognitive disability or developmental disability!

Disability as deviance

is the assumed condition for the inclusion of disability as a topic in Higher Education curriculum.

Ensuring Higher Education Opportunity for All 2008-11

5 year federal project awarded to Temple University to ensure students with disabilities will receive a high quality post-secondary education.

Linda Ware, SUNY GeneseoProject External Evaluator

Project PI:David T. MitchellTemple U Philadelphia

Project Goals

1. Human Resources will present disability as part of diversity when orienting new faculty

2. Two semester Humanities Seminar required of all Temple students will include themes related to disability as diversity.

3. UDL training & support for faculty & staff

With a focus on •the educational problems encountered by students

with disabilities;

•the identification of disability as an integral part of community and curricular diversity at the university; and

•the provision of opportunities for students with disabilities and scholars in Disability Studies to share their knowledge about the social predicament of people with disabilities in an increasingly globalizing context.

That disability is at once a question of the body and a question of the built environment makes it a central subject for the humanities—and for the social and natural sciences, and thus for new forms of cross-disciplinary study.

Michael Berube, 2002. Afterword, “If I should live so long.” Disability Studies Enabling the Humanities. Snyder, Brueggemann & Garland-Thomson (Eds.)

Throughout the Temple project Disability Studies was a tool

. . . Encourages students, faculty & staff to explore the social meanings, symbols, and stigmas attached to disability identity and asks how they relate to enforced systems of exclusion and of oppression . . .

Disability Studies

•Challenges the belief that disability is natural and timeless, rather than culturally constructed;

•Recognizes that disability is far too complex to be understood by any one field or discipline alone;

•Promotes interdisciplinary engagement on disability throughout higher education in other than medical situations.

Enforced systems of exclusion & oppressionocations of Disability•

•19th Century charity systems•Institutions (largely scientific)• Disability Research Industry• Sheltered Workshops• Academic research trends

• ALL sites where disabled people have been deposited against their will.

• Sharon L. Snyder & David T. Mitchell, 2006. Cultural Locations of Disability. U Chicago Press.

Authenticating Cultural Modes

• Disability Rights Movement• Disability Culture• Independent Living Movement• Disability Arts (visual, performance, blogs,

films, virtual worlds, etc.)

• All sites where disabled people willfully participate & parlay their unique identities into sources of strength, not deficiency.

Title of Presentation TEXT Presentations

“Uninformed Consent: Medical Testing & Vulnerable Populations”

Vaccination Against SmallpoxJenner

13

“On the sidewalks and In the schoolyards”

The Death & Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs

7

“Disability in the Old Testament: The Story of Samson”

Bible 8

“W.E.B DuBois and Disability” The Souls of Black Folks - DuBois 5“Freud & Disability” Introductory Lectures on

Psychoanalysis - Freud 3

Home: A History of Disability and Institutional Spaces?

Home: A Short History of an Idea - Rybczynski

7

“The Enlightenment and Disability”

The Declaration of Independence 7

“A World without Bodies” Totalitarianism 3

“Disability & Utopia” Utopia 3

More than a ‘Simple Splice’ ?

. . . disciplinary shifts in academe begin with clear recognition of the politicized nature of such efforts— that disciplinary fields are “in” politics—is a given.

DSE interrogates

• Exclusive ownership of disability by special education

• Questionable outcomes for P-12 sped programs (pullout, segregated placement)

• Failed implementation of P-12 inclusive education (mandated reform)

• “Gaze avoidance” in HE as we rarely consider the history, politics, sociology, or cultural aspects of disability

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Disability Culture in Higher

Education… on the move!!!

Handbook of Social CulturalFoundations. Steve Tozer, et al. Routledge Press 2010