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Disability Studies (disability + studies)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	83%

Selected Abstracts

Disability Studies and American Literature

LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2010
Taylor Hagood
Disability Studies is a small but growing field of theorization regarding the role of disability in identity politics. At once local and far-reaching in its scope, it examines not only the ways disabled people are marginalized, stigmatized, and oppressed, but also the ways that all bodies fall short of culturally, politically, and economically-driven bodily ideals. This discipline has been provocatively applied to American literature, with certain very recognizable characters, such as Flannery O'Connor's wooden-legged Hulga Hopewell and Ernest Hemingway's war-wounded Jake Barnes, receiving much attention. Still, the field of Disability Studies is young, and its application to American literature can and undoubtedly will be expanded in provocative ways. [source]

Devolution and Disability Equality Legislation: The Implementation of Part 4 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in England and Scotland

BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPECIAL EDUCATION, Issue 2 2003
Sheila Riddell
Part 4 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (as amended) came into force in September 2002. The Act covers Great Britain but, in relation to schools, is implemented through different special educational needs legislation in England and Scotland. This article by Sheila Riddell, Professor of Social Policy (Disability Studies) at Glasgow University and Director of the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research, explores the key differences in these legal frameworks, and discusses their implications for delivering consistent anti-discrimination policies north and south of the border. Professor Riddell argues that there is a need for close monitoring of the implementation of Part 4 of the DDA in English and Scottish schools. If major differences in implementation of the legislation emerge over time, there may be a need to consider the case for devolving responsibility for equal opportunities to the Holyrood Parliament or amending national education legislation to make it more consistent. This article will be of interest to anyone concerned with the implementation of Part 4 of the Disability Discrimination Act in England and Scotland. [source]

The Reintroduction of Ethics to Eighteenth-Century Literary Studies

LITERATURE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 7 2010
Elizabeth Kraft
The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a ,turn to ethics' in literary criticism in general and in criticism of the literature of the long 18th century in particular. Wayne Booth's The Company We Keep was instrumental in turning our attention to the relationship between books and readers, a relationship that he figured as a ,friendship' with the kinds of ethical demands that attend all friendships. A highly regarded work, Company influenced subsequent studies, such as my Character and Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Comic Fiction, but it was not until critics such as Melvyn New and Donald Wehrs began to situate literary analysis in terms drawn from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas that ,ethical criticism' of the field would become an identifiable ,school' of 18th-century studies. Building on, but diverging from, the political emphases of race, class, and gender, ethical critics insist on the ,otherness' of the text and its resistance to our ideologies and assumptions. My Women Novelists and the Ethics of Desire, for example, reads the works of women writers as statements of ethical agency rather than as evidence of political objectification. Edward Tomarken's Genre and Ethics similarly attends to the voices of literary works in their own contexts, meeting them face-to-face (in Levinasian terms) before asking questions regarding political implications or assumptions. The ,turn to ethics' is not a turn away from politics, however, for the impact of the ethical encounter will have real-world consequences. Therefore, ecocriticism and disability studies are likely to become growth areas in 18th-century ethical readings in the near future as these concerns surfaced in the period itself and are two subjects that dominate our own social, political, and ethical lives as well. [source]

Stigma, Community, Ethnography: Joan Ablon's Contribution to the Anthropology of Impairment-Disability

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2004
RUSSELL P. SHUTTLEWORTH
Joan Ablon has helped establish the anthropology of impairment-disability and significantly contributed to the role of anthropology in disability studies. In this article, we review the development of and situate Ablon's ethnographic research in the anthropology of impairment-disability. We then address various methodological issues in her work including her ethnographic approach, her grounding in action anthropology and her support for the development of the academic study of disability in anthropology and the careers of disabled anthropologists. The next section of the article examines Ablon's use of the notion of stigma, her understanding of community, and her engagement with disability rights. As examples of themes important to disability studies, we present her discussion of the implications of the ideal of the body beautiful, and gender differences in negotiating intimacy for people with physical differences. We close with a discussion of the future of an anthropology of impairment-disability. [disability, impairment, Ablon, genetics, ethnography] [source]

EQUALITY, FREEDOM, AND/OR JUSTICE FOR ALL: A RESPONSE TO MARTHA NUSSBAUM

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3-4 2009
MICHAEL BÉRUBÉ
Abstract: This essay is a reply to Martha Nussbaum's "Capabilities and Disabilities." It endorses Nussbaum's critique of the social-contract tradition and proposes that it might be productively contrasted with Michael Walzer's critique of John Rawls in Spheres of Justice. It notes that Nussbaum's emphasis on surrogacy and guardianship with regard to people with severe and profound cognitive disabilities poses a challenge to disability studies, insofar as the field tends to emphasize the self-representation of people with disabilities and to concentrate primarily on the aesthetic and political representation of physical disability. The essay concludes with an account of a recent exchange with Peter Singer on the question of our social expectations of people with Down syndrome. [source]