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March 31, 2004
Notes from Forum 5
This forum explores what disability studies is and model how to use language and representations of disability as an instructional tool in writing (and other) classes. Speakers who will initiate the conversation are members of Beyond Compliance and disAbility Law Society:
Rebecca Cory, Julia Morse, Jagdish Chander
Notes from the conversation:
Julie: We have two ads we want to watch and then discuss with you. The commercials: 1) Christopher Reeves (Nuveen) and 2) Dan Keplinger (Cingular Wireless) While you watch, think about what words you would use to describe these two commercials. What words were used in these commercials that pertain to disabilities?
Ad #1: The words participants used to describe the Christopher Reeve/Nuveen ad were Superman/Heroic/Comic book, manipulative, heart-tugger, congratulative, normalizing, offensive, condescending, and paternalistic. Words to describe people with disabilities in the commercial: "very special", cancer, AIDS, steps forward.
Ad #2: The words used to describe the Dan Keplinger/Cingular Wireless ad were religious, reverence, muse, singular, transcendent. Words to describe people with disabilities in the commercial: gimp, creativity, expression, lucky, person vs. body.
Jags: Two Views of Disability:
1) The Medical Model of Disability looks at a person with a disability as someone with a deficit, from a medical point of view. Disability is a disease and must either be prevented or cured. It is a problem to be fixed. There is no emphasis on the social aspects of disability. The impairment is located in the body or mind rather than in the larger society. This is the historically prevalent view.
2) The Social Model of Disability: views disability as a cultural construction. It presumes Disability is part of the human experience. This way of thinking about disability intersects with other movements (allies with civil rights movement, for instance)
Disability Studies uses the social model. DS has roots in disability activism and civil rights. There is a critical analysis of the position of people with disabilities in society. Rather than viewing disability as a deficit, 'disabilities' are viewed/described as characteristics.
People First Language is language that puts the person first (a person who is blind, a person who has epilepsy), and reclaims some of the terms that have traditionally been used in a pejorative way (gimp in the Cingular commercial, for instance). Person first language allows people to choose how they want to be labeled, and it takes into account the positioning of the speaker.
Rebecca: Let's use this theoretical framework to discuss the commercials some more, and then think about how we can move this information into the writing classroom.
Dana: We could ask what models are at work here, as far as representations? The Reeves commercial matched up with the old model, the medical model, because it uses the terms "cure" and relates spinal injury with cancer and AIDS.
Rachel: It plays off of Reeves' role as Superman, someone who rises above the crowd.
Carol: Reeves' image has been manipulated to make him look taller, slimmer. They make him fit into an ideal.
Rachel: I'd want my students to think about who these companies are. Is Nuveen really investing our time and energy and money into this type of research? Or is this just a ploy?
Dawnelle: And who is the audience? What is expected at this moment [The Super Bowl]?
Carol: There is a gap between a commercial promoting investment, a way to get rich. But the commercial is showing the "do good" aspect of investing (if you invest, you are somehow doing good). There isn't a connection between the two-investing money and doing good.
Rachel: It is a happy story because he ends up looking just like able-bodied people.
Rebecca: Why is there tension surrounding Reeves in the disability movement? Because he has the money to fight this personally while many do not have nearly this amount of money. Reeves is problematic because he promotes scientific research at the expense of current human rights.
Rebecca suggested ways that disability could be approached in the classroom:
1) Deaf President Now—In the '80s, the board of Gallaudet University hired a hearing candidate for President over two deaf candidates. Exercises: Write articles about this controversy from different perspectives. Evaluate the articles for language. Compare to other student protests, for example, Kent State, the integration of white colleges, etc.
2) Tunnel of Oppression http://www.dailyorange.com/global_user_elements/printpage.cfm?storyid=585462 Exercises: Apply social model to program that represents medical model. BCCC wrote extensively about this program. See their article at: http://home.att.net/~TANCWEBDESIGN/BCCCTUNNEL.html
How can we start seeing these problems as cultural rather than individual?
Margaret: I read an article about exercises that are supposed to make able-bodied people (or temporarily able bodied) more sensitive to the experiences of people with disabilities, such as "walking a mile in my shoes" or "rolling a mile in my wheels." How do you make a common cause without reducing it to feeling sorry for?
Rebecca: Rather than simulation, students could analyze an environment, a space, without actually sitting in a wheelchair.
Paul: How does Syracuse rate as far as meeting regulations? And how is the environment, socially, for students with a 'disability'?
Jags: The Office of Disability Studies has made a big impact on this campus. I've been here for 2 1/2 years and there have been significant changes.
Margaret: How much of the university response is working under a medical model and how much is working under a social model?
Rebecca: SU is on the cusp of getting disability, but it hasn't gone all the way yet. Beyond Compliance was founded on the idea that mere compliance wasn't enough. They hope to move the university to think about universal design: people can access the environment in the way that is most convenient for them.
Mary: There was an article last semester in the D.O. that reported a high level administrator as saying that disability isn't a part of hiring practices, because there isn't a large population of students with disabilities for them to be a role model for.
Rebecca: There is a constant cry in the disability movement: Nothing about us without us. There is a need for disabled scholars in this field-it can't just be "abled" scholars.
Posted by mryonker at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)
Disabling "Handicapped": Representations of disability and language
Diversity Forum 5—Spring 2004
Disabling "Handicapped": Representations of disability and language
This forum explores what disability studies is and model how to use language and representations of disability as an instructional tool in writing (and other) classes. Speakers who will initiate the conversation are members of Beyond Compliance and disAbility Law Society:
Rebecca Cory, Julia Morse, Jagdish Chander
Posted by mryonker at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2004
Notes from Forum 4
Alison Mountz began the conversation. She teaches urban geography and is interested in the challenges of getting students to learn about the city. She taught at the University of British Columbia before coming to Syracuse. She organizes field trips so that students enter into the city, encountering it up close, rather than studing it from a distance:
At U.B.C., students were required to do a two hour walking tour in the downtown eastside area. The students then created representations of the place, recognizing themselves as members of the city, as complicit in what they saw. Students produced different representations of the place—including photo collages, tape recordings, collections of artifacts, as well as written essays—that formed the basis for a lot of discussion.
On another project at U.B.C. students were to walk around "gentrifying" neighborhoods, unguided, observing signs of displacement.
In Syracuse she arranged a field trip to the Eastern Farm Workers Association, where students could learn about their work and advocacy, in the face of the effects of globalization.
Students in at SU also went to the Midland Avenue waste treatment facility site, where they met with local activists as well as walked around the site.
Anne asked each panelist to talk about what they worried about with these assignments, and Alison commented that she had anxiety about what students can learn in two hours, what challenges rather than reinforces stereotypes; she also worries that residents of the neighborhoods will feel uncomfortable as students enter their space. She provides a lot of content before they go, and the class discussion moves between theory/studies and their experiences.
Adam Banks: In response to Alison's assignment, Adam mentioned the barbershop series, films which take up the issues of gentrification. He then began by talking about finding a place in diversity work/initiatives where you can stand as a way to connect practice and theory. For him, the question is, how do we enlarge access for those who have been excluded? Tolerance and multiculturalism isn't enough. The stories of African Americans, Latino/as, and Native Americans have to be heard as part of the larger stories. So writing instruction is organized in two ways: [1] framing the courses around language and politics and [2] making central to the course content the histories and practices and rhetorics of those who have been excluded, so that all people can see themselves in the stories. He described a number of diversities - intellectual, pedagogical, curricular, and evaluative. They all have to be a part of daily practice. He also noted that linguists no longer debate the value of different languages, but there is still a debate about what language(s) we teach and value in the classroom.
Adam then described his current WRT 205 class, which is taught from an African American perspective and then links out to larger issues. He draws on popular culture, without reducing the intellectual rigor of the coursework. He is looking always for students to find ways to play to their interests while still attending to the larger issues raised in the course. He doesn't think there's a problem with content in a writing course.
Adam described his 'intellectual mix tape' assignment - to demonstrate for students the different ways to package ideas and intellectual claims. They have to create a sound track that conveys or challenges the work/readings of the course as well as write something like 'liner notes,' which requires higher order synthesis. That is, they can't just pick some music, but they have to argue for the particular mixing they have designed.
In a course, culture, and technology, Adam requires that students do a technology transformation project, based on 'low riders' (historically a practice in Latino culture, where men transform cars so that they reflect the perfect combination of individual identity and larger cultural connections). Students have to transform the computer, from the codes to the case.
He is interested in creating real space for people in the curriculum without ever sacrificing the intellectual work/rigor.
Michael Lasley talked about how Spike Lee's film "Bamboozled" might be taught in our writing studios, especially Studio 2. He showed two clips from the film, and passed out a handout with ideas on ways to historicize the film (see handout). This unit aims to challenge the blackface and bias-related incidents on the SU campus.
Brian Stout discussed the activist work he is doing on campus in terms of LGBT issues. As a witness to the gay bashing in the fall, he has taken it upon himself to change the climate. He passed out an essay that he and Rachel Moran have written (which will appear in the LGBT Pedagogy book being produced by the Graduate School, edited by Kathleen Farrell, Nisha Gupta, and Mary Queen) and a list of resources. He then showed a 10 minute power point presentation. He has talked with Judicial Affairs, Residential Life, and a Higher Education class about this work, so it is making it's way into the institution. The Writing Program will have this presentation available for teachers to use through its diversity website.
Posted by mryonker at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)
Developing Curriculum
Diversity Forum 4—Spring 2004
Developing Curriculum
In this second diversity forum of the spring semester—Developing Curriculum—several teachers from across the University will share course materials and ideas that reflect a range of interpretations and applications of "writing and diversity in a globalized world." Rather than simply showcase successful enactments of design ideas, however, teachers will discuss the risks and anxieties and challenges that accompany any efforts to weave diversity issues into a curriculum.
Presenters:
Adam Banks, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, The Writing Program
Anne Fitzsimmons, Teacher Training Coordinator, The Writing Program
Michael Lasley, PhD student in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric
Alison Mountz, Professor of Geography
Mark Rupert, Professor of Political Science
Posted by mryonker at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)