disability & race
Dec. 25th, 2010 05:44 am![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troubleI stole Don's computer because he is sleeping.
There's a discussion going on on a disability research mailing list talking about putting together a seminar on intersections of race & disability. I'm just going to put the suggestions in the post (behind the cut) because I want to have them for my own easy access later, and because I thought others might be interested as well.
These are all just C&Ps. I have no opinions and haven't even looked at most of them yet.
Book: Music, Disability & Society
Anarcha Project
Foucault, Michel, "Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College De France 1975-1976", Picador.
Foucault, Michel, "Abnormal: Lectures at the College De France 1974-1975", Picador.
Carrier, James G. Learning Disability: Social Class and the Construction of Inequality in American Education Contributions to the Study of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Stoler, Laura Ann. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton, 1996.
Graves, Joseph L. The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
Montagu, Ashley. Race and Iq. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Harding, Sandra The "Racial" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future Race, Gender, and Science. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Matt Wray's "Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness"
is excellent.
Asch, Adrienne. "Critical Race Theory, Feminism, and Disability: Reflections
on Social Justice and Personal Identity." *Gendering Disability*. Ed. Bonnie
G. Smith and Beth Hutchison. Rutgers UP, 9-44.
Baynton, Douglas C. "Disability and the Justification of Inequality in
American History." *The New Disability History*. Ed. Paul K. Longmore and
Lauri Umansky. New York: NYU P, 2001. 33-57. <-- I have read this. It's very good, but I don't think it's really spot on the topic. It's more about how disability has been used as code for racial prejudice, i.e. "we can't let them in, they've got broken brains".
Burch, Susan and Hannah Joyner. *Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson*.
Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 2007. <-- I haven't read this book but the story is of Junius Wilson, who was confined in an insane asylum but was actually Deaf.
Ford, A. Rahman. "Race, Disability, and Denial." [Weblog Entry.] *
Racialicious*. February 3, 2010.
http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/0
12/21/2010.
Rowden, Terry. *The Songs of Blind Folk*. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 2009.
Schweik, Susan. "Race, Segregation, and the Ugly Law." *The Ugly Laws*. New
York: NYU P, 2009. 184-204.
I really like Anna Stubblefield's article on disability, race and eugenics.
Just look up her name and you will find it.
The classic article on race and disability is Leonard Kriegel's "Uncle
Tom and Tiny Tim" in American Scholar 38:3 (1969)
For the related history of slavery and disability, see Dea Boster, "An
"epeleptick" bondswoman: fits, slavery, and power in the antebellum
South
by Boster," Bulletin of the History of Medicine Vol. 83, Issue 2
(2009), and her dissertation, "Unfit for Bondage: Disability and
African American Slavery in the United States, 1800-1860," PhD:
University of Michigan 2010.
The late Christopher Bell's book on blackness and disability will be coming
out within the year published by Lit Verlag.
Every other month, I prepare a short feature on a notable book in our
library for _The Braille Monitor_ (the magazine of the NFB). Just
before reading Marty Pernick's message about the Kriegel article, I was
writing about Robert Scott's _The Making of Blind Men_ (1969). In my
discussion of Scott's book, I cite some earlier NFB publications that
referenced it. One of those is by the late president of the NFB,
Kenneth Jernigan. It's called "Disability And Visibility: Uncle Tom,
Blind Tom, and Tiny Tim"
(www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/bro
lity_edit.html) ; and it's a critique of the Kriegel piece with some
words about the Scott book appended.
Mere coincidence?? In any case, I'm grateful to Marty for stirring me
to bring this article to the attention of disability historians.
Let me add that Jernigan himself was a Republican and politically
conservative by the standards of the 1970s--which is not to say that he
was not supportive of the civil rights movement and of racial equality.
In fact, pretty much right up to his death in 1998, he looked for
similarities between the civil rights movement, the women's movement,
and his own work on behalf of independence, security, and opportunity
for the blind. For what it's worth, my own experience as a staffer over
the past two and half years is that the NFB is the most race-blind
organization I've ever been associated with (and that includes several
universities and quasi-academic organizations).
Interestingly Jernigan succeeded Jacobus tenBroek as president of the
NFB. Besides being regarded by many as one of the founders of
disability rights law, tenBroek was enough of a left-winger to speak out
against the loyalty oath at UC circa 1950, and to vocally support the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964. It appears to me that tenBroek
handpicked Jernigan to succeed him. TenBroek died in office at age 57
in March 1968. As first vice-president, Jernigan moved up and remained
the leader of the NFB even beyond 1986, when he stepped down as
president.
A couple of other points. Each year we host the Jacobus tenBroek
Disability Law Symposium (www.nfb.org/nfb/Law_Symposium.asp). In 2011,
the AAPD will be co-host and the theme will be "Bridging the Gap between
the Disability Rights Movement and Other Civil Rights Movements."
Speakers will include Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on
Civil and Human Rights, Shannon Price Minter of the National Center for
Lesbian Rights, and Lynn Hecht Schafran of Legal Momentum (the Women
Legal Defense and Education Fund).
I am personally fascinated by the history of the NFB on the spectrum of
American politics writ large, and I'd love to have disability historians
come and use our unique resources to investigate this as well as other
aspects of the blind civil rights movement. We have completed basic
processing of the Jacobus tenBroek papers. Please take a look at the
finding aid:
www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/reso
We are also at work on the NFB corporate archives and will try to
facilitate the efforts of any scholar who wants to make use of them.
Cordially,
Ed Morman
For deaf resources,National Black Deaf Advocates http://www.nbda.org/resources/resources
Articles in the American Annals of the Deaf
one book is:Black perspectives on the deaf communityJennifer Fuller; et alGallaudet University, 2005.
maybe a better question in disability and race will be how members of racial and ethnic groups viewed and looked at people with disabilities within their respective groups (discrimination and social exclusion and stigma of shame and dishonor).
Regarding tenBroek -- he was also chief among the attorneys who represented
the Japanese families who were interned during the 2nd World War. Adrienne
Asch gave a wonderful talk on him at a conference about the similarities
betw disability rights and 'racial' civil rights movements in Berkeley some
years ago. I believe the videos are still available.
Here are some calls for papers about Disability & Race that will likely produce good words in a year or two:
Call for Papers: Disability and Native American/Indigenous Studies
Special Issue of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability (JLCDS)
Guest Editors, Siobhan Senier and Penelope Kelsey
In Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia 1900-1950, a Nisga’a elder implores the historian Mary Ellen Kelm: “When we talk about the poor health of our people, remember it all began with the white man” (xv). This special issue of JLCDS invites scholars to consider two interrelated phenomena: on the one hand, colonialism has produced indigenous disability and illness—through the depletion of traditional sources of food and medicine, enforced containment in boarding schools and substandard reservation housing, trauma, poverty and so on. On the other hand, colonial discourse also pathologizes Native people—construing them as genetically prone to certain illnesses, for instance. Given these colonial phenomena, scholarship is particularly welcome that considers how Native people indigenize the famous disability-rights call, “nothing about us without us”—bringing tribally situated responses, adaptations, and resistance to disability and illness.
JLCDS seeks essays that conjoin the methodologies and content of Disability Studies with Native American/Indigenous Studies. The texts under consideration can range from literature and film, in any genre, to non-print and non-alphabetic media. Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:
- Tribally specific understandings/representations of illness and disability;
- Applications of Disability Studies to indigenous texts;
- Applications of indigenous methodologies to disability literature;
- Colonization, medicalization, and the construction of disability;
- Indigenous nationalisms, feminisms, and Two-Spirited resistance to the non-Native construction of disability;
- Illnesses/disabilities more emic to the American Indian experience (i.e., tuberculosis, diabetes, PTSD, Split Feather syndrome);
- Environmental degradation and racism and community health;
- Representations of substance abuse and other community health concerns in colonial contexts;
- Representations of indigenous disability vis-à-vis nation or community.
Proposals and queries should be sent to Siobhan.Senier@unh.edu and Penelope.Kelsey@colorado.edu Proposals are due by March 15, 2011, and proposal selections will be made by May 30, 2011. Completed essays for those selected are due October 1, 2011, and articles will be selected in December of 2011.
Also, book I must check out: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.p
There's a discussion going on on a disability research mailing list talking about putting together a seminar on intersections of race & disability. I'm just going to put the suggestions in the post (behind the cut) because I want to have them for my own easy access later, and because I thought others might be interested as well.
These are all just C&Ps. I have no opinions and haven't even looked at most of them yet.
Book: Music, Disability & Society
Anarcha Project
Foucault, Michel, "Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College De France 1975-1976", Picador.
Foucault, Michel, "Abnormal: Lectures at the College De France 1974-1975", Picador.
Carrier, James G. Learning Disability: Social Class and the Construction of Inequality in American Education Contributions to the Study of Education. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.
Stoler, Laura Ann. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: Norton, 1996.
Graves, Joseph L. The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
Montagu, Ashley. Race and Iq. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Harding, Sandra The "Racial" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future Race, Gender, and Science. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Matt Wray's "Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness"
is excellent.
Asch, Adrienne. "Critical Race Theory, Feminism, and Disability: Reflections
on Social Justice and Personal Identity." *Gendering Disability*. Ed. Bonnie
G. Smith and Beth Hutchison. Rutgers UP, 9-44.
Baynton, Douglas C. "Disability and the Justification of Inequality in
American History." *The New Disability History*. Ed. Paul K. Longmore and
Lauri Umansky. New York: NYU P, 2001. 33-57. <-- I have read this. It's very good, but I don't think it's really spot on the topic. It's more about how disability has been used as code for racial prejudice, i.e. "we can't let them in, they've got broken brains".
Burch, Susan and Hannah Joyner. *Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson*.
Chapel Hill: U North Carolina P, 2007. <-- I haven't read this book but the story is of Junius Wilson, who was confined in an insane asylum but was actually Deaf.
Ford, A. Rahman. "Race, Disability, and Denial." [Weblog Entry.] *
Racialicious*. February 3, 2010.
http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/0
12/21/2010.
Rowden, Terry. *The Songs of Blind Folk*. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 2009.
Schweik, Susan. "Race, Segregation, and the Ugly Law." *The Ugly Laws*. New
York: NYU P, 2009. 184-204.
I really like Anna Stubblefield's article on disability, race and eugenics.
Just look up her name and you will find it.
The classic article on race and disability is Leonard Kriegel's "Uncle
Tom and Tiny Tim" in American Scholar 38:3 (1969)
For the related history of slavery and disability, see Dea Boster, "An
"epeleptick" bondswoman: fits, slavery, and power in the antebellum
South
by Boster," Bulletin of the History of Medicine Vol. 83, Issue 2
(2009), and her dissertation, "Unfit for Bondage: Disability and
African American Slavery in the United States, 1800-1860," PhD:
University of Michigan 2010.
The late Christopher Bell's book on blackness and disability will be coming
out within the year published by Lit Verlag.
Every other month, I prepare a short feature on a notable book in our
library for _The Braille Monitor_ (the magazine of the NFB). Just
before reading Marty Pernick's message about the Kriegel article, I was
writing about Robert Scott's _The Making of Blind Men_ (1969). In my
discussion of Scott's book, I cite some earlier NFB publications that
referenced it. One of those is by the late president of the NFB,
Kenneth Jernigan. It's called "Disability And Visibility: Uncle Tom,
Blind Tom, and Tiny Tim"
(www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/bro
lity_edit.html) ; and it's a critique of the Kriegel piece with some
words about the Scott book appended.
Mere coincidence?? In any case, I'm grateful to Marty for stirring me
to bring this article to the attention of disability historians.
Let me add that Jernigan himself was a Republican and politically
conservative by the standards of the 1970s--which is not to say that he
was not supportive of the civil rights movement and of racial equality.
In fact, pretty much right up to his death in 1998, he looked for
similarities between the civil rights movement, the women's movement,
and his own work on behalf of independence, security, and opportunity
for the blind. For what it's worth, my own experience as a staffer over
the past two and half years is that the NFB is the most race-blind
organization I've ever been associated with (and that includes several
universities and quasi-academic organizations).
Interestingly Jernigan succeeded Jacobus tenBroek as president of the
NFB. Besides being regarded by many as one of the founders of
disability rights law, tenBroek was enough of a left-winger to speak out
against the loyalty oath at UC circa 1950, and to vocally support the
Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964. It appears to me that tenBroek
handpicked Jernigan to succeed him. TenBroek died in office at age 57
in March 1968. As first vice-president, Jernigan moved up and remained
the leader of the NFB even beyond 1986, when he stepped down as
president.
A couple of other points. Each year we host the Jacobus tenBroek
Disability Law Symposium (www.nfb.org/nfb/Law_Symposium.asp). In 2011,
the AAPD will be co-host and the theme will be "Bridging the Gap between
the Disability Rights Movement and Other Civil Rights Movements."
Speakers will include Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on
Civil and Human Rights, Shannon Price Minter of the National Center for
Lesbian Rights, and Lynn Hecht Schafran of Legal Momentum (the Women
Legal Defense and Education Fund).
I am personally fascinated by the history of the NFB on the spectrum of
American politics writ large, and I'd love to have disability historians
come and use our unique resources to investigate this as well as other
aspects of the blind civil rights movement. We have completed basic
processing of the Jacobus tenBroek papers. Please take a look at the
finding aid:
www.nfb.org/images/nfb/Publications/reso
We are also at work on the NFB corporate archives and will try to
facilitate the efforts of any scholar who wants to make use of them.
Cordially,
Ed Morman
For deaf resources,National Black Deaf Advocates http://www.nbda.org/resources/resources
Articles in the American Annals of the Deaf
one book is:Black perspectives on the deaf communityJennifer Fuller; et alGallaudet University, 2005.
maybe a better question in disability and race will be how members of racial and ethnic groups viewed and looked at people with disabilities within their respective groups (discrimination and social exclusion and stigma of shame and dishonor).
Regarding tenBroek -- he was also chief among the attorneys who represented
the Japanese families who were interned during the 2nd World War. Adrienne
Asch gave a wonderful talk on him at a conference about the similarities
betw disability rights and 'racial' civil rights movements in Berkeley some
years ago. I believe the videos are still available.
Here are some calls for papers about Disability & Race that will likely produce good words in a year or two:
Call for Papers: Disability and Native American/Indigenous Studies
Special Issue of Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability (JLCDS)
Guest Editors, Siobhan Senier and Penelope Kelsey
In Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia 1900-1950, a Nisga’a elder implores the historian Mary Ellen Kelm: “When we talk about the poor health of our people, remember it all began with the white man” (xv). This special issue of JLCDS invites scholars to consider two interrelated phenomena: on the one hand, colonialism has produced indigenous disability and illness—through the depletion of traditional sources of food and medicine, enforced containment in boarding schools and substandard reservation housing, trauma, poverty and so on. On the other hand, colonial discourse also pathologizes Native people—construing them as genetically prone to certain illnesses, for instance. Given these colonial phenomena, scholarship is particularly welcome that considers how Native people indigenize the famous disability-rights call, “nothing about us without us”—bringing tribally situated responses, adaptations, and resistance to disability and illness.
JLCDS seeks essays that conjoin the methodologies and content of Disability Studies with Native American/Indigenous Studies. The texts under consideration can range from literature and film, in any genre, to non-print and non-alphabetic media. Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:
- Tribally specific understandings/representations of illness and disability;
- Applications of Disability Studies to indigenous texts;
- Applications of indigenous methodologies to disability literature;
- Colonization, medicalization, and the construction of disability;
- Indigenous nationalisms, feminisms, and Two-Spirited resistance to the non-Native construction of disability;
- Illnesses/disabilities more emic to the American Indian experience (i.e., tuberculosis, diabetes, PTSD, Split Feather syndrome);
- Environmental degradation and racism and community health;
- Representations of substance abuse and other community health concerns in colonial contexts;
- Representations of indigenous disability vis-à-vis nation or community.
Proposals and queries should be sent to Siobhan.Senier@unh.edu and Penelope.Kelsey@colorado.edu Proposals are due by March 15, 2011, and proposal selections will be made by May 30, 2011. Completed essays for those selected are due October 1, 2011, and articles will be selected in December of 2011.
Also, book I must check out: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.p
