COGR275: Mediated Ability: [Dis]ability and Audio-Visual Culture

UCSD Dept of Communication
Winter 2015
Thursdays: 3 - 5:50 PM
Professor:  Brian Goldfarb
Office Hours: Thurs 1:30-3:00 pm or by appointment, room MCC 241
Contact: bgoldfarb at sign ucsd . edu

Overview:

This seminar considers the role media play in how ability and disability is conceived, represented, and negotiated. Through weekly readings and discussions participants will examine theoretical approaches at the intersection of disability studies and media studies. Our discussions will be framed in relation to a range of empirical examples from screenings of mainstream and alternative film/video, educational and internet-based media as well as examination of assistive technologies. Beyond critiques of representation, we will consider the ways that media technologies and practices structure embodiment, experience and affective dimensions of (dis)ability. We will also devote attention to the co-constitutive nature of discourses of gender, class, race, nationality, and disability.

Requirements:

  • Weekly readings (approx 50-60 pages) and film/video viewing (UCSD film library reserve).
  • Help facilitate discussion of one of the seminar readings by introducing a media example or artifact for consideration.

  • A 10 -15 page research paper or equivalent project based on one of the topics studied or other topic closely related to the theme of the course.
 Required Texts:
  • Articles on e-reserves (pwd bg275), TED or linked to the syllabus.

Recommended Text:

  • Leonard Davis, ed, The Disability Studies Reader (3rd or 4th edition)
  • Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Staring: How We Look
  • Mairian Corker and Tom Schakespeare, Disability/Postmodernity. ISBN: 978-0826450555 (Abbreviated as D/P in the Course Schedule)
    it took and act of congress to order this pizza

Course Schedule:

Notes: Weekly topics and readings listed here are provisional and may be updated after the course begins--please check this site weekly for updates. Some weeks list a number of readings--required readings will be selected from those listed by the instructor through discussion with participants. Some optional readings will be summarized and discussed by presenters.

week: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  | 5  |  6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10

WEEK 1 (Jan 8) : Course overview. Discussion of terms: (dis)ability, impairment, media..
  • Media as an arena of disability identity/representation
  • Media as barrier
  • Media as prosthesis
  • Media as tool for activism/political organizing
  • Media as space of community

Read:

Films/Media:

 

WEEK 2 (Jan 15): Models of Disability and Impairment

Readings:

  • Mike Oliver, "Defining Impairment and Disability: Issues At Stake," Exploring the Divide, ed, C Barnes & G Mercer
  • Simi Linton, “Reassigning Meaning,” The Disability Studies Reader, ed, L Davis
  • The Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation and The Disability Alliance discuss "Fundamental Principles of Disability"
  • Carol Thomas and Mairian Corker, "A Journey around the Social Model" Disability/Postmodernity (18-30)
  • Thomas Couser, "Disability, Life Narative, and Representation" (399-401) in The Disability Studies Reader, ed, L Davis
  • Tobin Siebers, “Disability and the Theory of Complex Embodiment” in The Disability Studies Reader, ed, L Davis

Films/Media:

  • Robert Arnold, The Key of G--View prior to class
  • Clips shown in class:
    • Billy Golfus and David E. Simpson, When Billy Broke His Head--and Other Tales of Wonder
    • The Black Stork (Are You Fit to Marry) (shown in class)
    • Laurence Hott and Diane Garey, Through Deaf Eyes (USA, 2007)

Further Reading:

  • Susan Wendell, “Toward a Feminist Theory of Disability,” The Disability Studies Reader, ed, Lennard J. Davis
  • Tom Shakespeare, "Just Around the Corner: the Quest for Cure," in Disability Rights and Wrongs
  • Paul Jaeger and Cynthia Ann Bowman, "Ch 2: Social Classification of Reactions to Disability"; in Understanding Disability: Inclusion Access, Diversity and Civil Rights
  • Tanya Titchkosky, "Disability: A Rose by Any Other Name? "People-First" Language in Canadian Society"
  • Mairian Corker, "Sensing Disability"
  • Bradley A. Areheart,  "When Disability Isn’t 'Just Right': The Entrenchment of the Medical Model of Disability and the Goldilocks Dilemma"
  • Susan Sontag, "AIDS and Its Metaphors"
  • Steven Selden, "Eugenics and The Social Construction of Merit, Race, and Disability"
  • TanyaTitchkosky, "Governing Embodiment: Technologies of Constituting Citizens with Disabilities"

WEEK 3 (Jan 22): Critiques of Mainstream Media Representations of Disability

Readings:

  • David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, "Ch1: Representation and Its Discontents" in Narrative Prosthesis
  • Goggin, "Disability, Media, and the Politics of Vulnerability"
  • Stuart Murray, "Witnessing" in Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination
  • Georgina Kleege, "Blind Nightmares," in Sight Unseen
  • Tom Shakespeare, "Art and Lies? Representations of Disability on Film"
  • Jack Nelson, "Broken Images: Portrayals of Those with Disabilities in American Media"

Films/Media:

  • Hal Ashby, Coming Home (1978) --View prior to class
  • Clips shown in class
    • John Badham, Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981)
    • Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby (2004

Further Reading:

  • Joseph Grigely, "Blindness and Deafness as Metaphors: An Anthological Essay"
  • Allen Rucker, "The Gimp Media Revolution"
  • Deni Elliott, "Disability and the Media: The Ethics of the Matter," The Disabled, the Media, and the Information Age, ed, J Nelson
  • Charles A Riley II, Disability and the Media, "Ch1: Heroes of Assimilation: How the Media Transform Disability," "Ch5: and Here's the Pitch: How Advertising Uses Disability); "Appendix A: Guidelines for Portraying People with Disabilities in the Media"
  • Paul Jaeger and Cynthia Ann Bowman, "Ch 8: Representations of Disability across Media" (pp103-109), in Understanding Disability: Inclusion Access, Diversity and Civil Rights
  • Hayes and Black, "Troubling Signs: Disability, Hollywood Movies and the Construction of a Discourse of Pity" available online
  • Vic Finkelstein "Outside, 'Inside Out'" (British Channel 4 program)
  • Brian Sweeney, "BBC Radio 4 and the Experiential Dimension of Disability"
  • Michael Davidson, "Phantom Limbs: Film Noir and the Disabled Body"
  • Russel Johnson, "Clara Bow in Free to Love (1925): Feature Films and Eugenics in the1920s"
  • Real Live Media, "Guide for Reporting about People with Learning Disabilities"
  • Colin Barnes, "Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People"
  • Haller and Ralph, "Profitability, Diversity, and Disability Images in Advertising in the United States and Great Britain" available online


WEEK 4 (Jan 29): The Horror/Pleasure of Difference and Disfigurement

Readings:
  • Petra Kuppers, "Freaks, Stages, and Medical Theaters, " Disability and Contemporary Performance
  • Leonard Davis, "Constructing Normalcy"
  • Susan Schweik, "Kicked to the Curb: Ugly Law Then and Now," Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, Vl 46
  • Robert Bogdan, "The Social Construction of Freaks"
  • Bree Hadley, "Mobilising the monster: modern disabled performers' manipulation of the freakshow"
  • Stephens, "Twenty-First Century Freak Show: Recent Transformations in the Exhibition of Non-Normative Bodies " available online

Films/Media:

  • Todd Browning, Freaks--View prior to class (also on youtube in 5 parts--part 1)
  • Clips shown in class:
    • David Lynch, The Elephant Man
    • The Hunchback of Notra Dam

Further Reading:

  • Millet, "Exceeding the Frame: The Photography of Diane Arbus" available online
  • Meira Cook, "None of Us: Ambiguity as Moral Discourse in Tod Browning’s Freaks," Screening Disability, Ed, Christopher Smit and Anthony Enns
  • Sally Chivers, "The Horror of Becoming ‘One of Us’: Tod Browning’s Freaks and Disability," Screening Disability, Ed, Christopher Smit and Anthony Enns
  • Nicole Markotic, "Disabling the Viewer: Perceptions of Disability in Tod Browning’s Freaks," Screening Disability, Ed, Christopher Smit and Anthony Enns
  • Howells and Chemers, " Midget Cities: Utopia, Utopianism, and the Vor-schein of the 'Freak' Show" available online
  • Crutchfield, 'Play[ing] her part correctly': Helen Keller as Vaudevillian Freak" available online
  • Adrienne Phelps Coco, "Diseased, Maimed, Mutilated: Categorizations of Disability and an Ugly Law in Late Nineteenth-Century Chicago"

 

WEEK 5 (Feb 5): Staring and Looking: Visual Interactions Across and Around Difference

Readings:

  • Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Bodies," and "Beholding," in Staring: How We Look
  • Tobin Siebers, "The Aesthetics of Human Disqualification" (lecture audio; transcript; images)

Films/Media:

  • Tami Gold with Jennifer Miller, Juggling Gender (1992) View in Arts Library prior to class
  • Kevin Connolly's Photography: The Rolling Exhibition
  • Tony Deifell, Seeing Beyond Sight, Photographs by Blind Teenagers www.seeingbeyondsight.org

Further Reading:

  • Eliza Chandler, "Sidewalk Stories: The Troubling Task of Identification" (read online)
  • Sandell et al, " In The Shadow of the Freakshow: The Impact of Freakshow Tradition on the Display and Understanding of Disability History in Museums" online
  • Susan Schweik, "Begging the Question: Disability, Mendicancy, Speech and the Law"

 

WEEK 6 (Feb 12): Intersections: (de)sexualizing, (de)racing, (de)culturing as De-capacitating

Readings:

  • Jennifer Pokempner and Dorothy Roberts, "Poverty, Welfare Reform, and the Meaning of Disability"
  • Beth Ferri and David Conner, "Tools of Exclusion: Race, Disability, and (Re)segregated Education"
  • Robert McRuer, "Crip Eye for the Normate Guy," Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability
  • Ellen Samuels, "Examining Millie and Christine McKoy: Where Enslavement and Enfreakment Meet"

If you have time, also look at:

  • Fjord, "Disasters, Race, and Disability: [Un]Seen Through the Political Lens on Katrina"
  • Casandra Jackson, "Visualizing Slavery and the Disabled Subject in the Art of Carrie Mae Weems"
  • Moya Bailey, "'the Illest': Disability as Metaphor in Hip Hop Music"

Films/Media:

Further Reading:

  • Chris Bell, "Could this Happen to You?" (127-140) in Blackness and disability: critical examinations and cultural interventions / ed, Christopher M. Bell
  • David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, "The Eugenic Atlantic: race, disability, and the making of an international Eugenic science, 1800–1945"
  • Della L. Perry and Ruth Keszia Whiteside, "Women, Gender and 'Disability': Historical And Contemporary Intersections Of ‘Otherness’"
  • Nirmala Erevelles and Andrea Minear, "Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in Discourses of Intersectionality"
  • Steven Selden, "Eugenics and the social construction of merit, race and disability"
  • Adrienne Asch, "Critical Race Theory, Feminism, and Disability: Reflections on Social Justice and Personal Identity"
  • Pamela Block, "From Pathology to Power: Rethinking Race, Poverty, and Disability"
  • Beth Ferri, "Changing the Script: Race and Disability in Lynn Manning's ‘Weights’"
  • Deborah Stienstra, "The Intersection of Disability and Race/Ethnicity/Official Language/Religion"

 

WEEK 7 (Feb 19): Ability in a Transnational Context: Regional and National Differences that Define Capacity

Readings:

  • Arran Stibbe, "Disability, gender and power in Japanese television drama"
  • Sharon L. Snyder David T. Mitchell, "Introduction: Ablenationalism and the Geo-Politics of Disability"
  • Patrick Devlieger and Jori De Coster, "Disability in African Films: A Semiotic Analysis"
  • James Valentine, "Naming and Narrating: Disability in Japan," Disability/Postmodernity
  • Susan Schweik, "Disability and the Normal Body of the (Native) Citizen” Social Research, Volume 78, Number 2, Summer 2011
  • Ben-Moshe, Liat and Powell, Justin J.W., "Sign of our times? Revis(it)ing the International Symbol of Access"
  • Natalia Molina, “Medicalizing the Mexican: Immigration, Race, and Disability in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States.” Radical History Review (Winter, 2006)

Films/Media:

  • Djibril Diop Mambéty, Tales of Little People (1994-?)
  • Staff Benda Bilili - Music Video "Polio" http://youtu.be/KzCUcO_d1qI and "Bouger Le Monde" http://youtu.be/rt-G_6Ba_rk
  • Robert Lemelson and Dag Yngvesson, Movement and Madness (2006)--View prior to class
  • Kazuo Hara, Goodbye CP (Japan, 1972)--Clips shown in class
  • Bong Joon-ho, Mother (South Korea, 2009)
  • Janice Tanaka, Who's Going to Pay for These Donuts Anyway? (USA, 1992)

Further Reading:

  • Michael Davidson, “Universal Design: The Work of Disability in the Age of Globalization”
  • Eungjung Kim, “Heaven for disabled people: nationalism and international human rights imagery”: Disability & Society 26.1 (Jan., 2011).
  • Stuart Murray and Clare Barker, “Disabling Postcolonialism: Global Disability Cultures and Democratic Criticism” The Disability Studies Reader (4th ed.), ed. Lennard Davis. Routledge
  • Robert McRuer, "Disability Nationalism in Crip Times"
  • James I. Charlton, "Peripheral Everywhere"
  • Anita Ghai, "Disability in the Indian Context," Disability/Postmodernity
  • Tanya Titchkosky and Katie Aubrecht, "The Anguish of Power: Remapping Mental Diversity with an Anticolonial Compass"
  • Patrick J. Devlieger, "Frames of Reference in African Proverbs on Disability
  • Patrick Devlieger, "Surviving with a Disability: Strategies of Production and Reproduction in South and North"
  • Patrick Devlieger, "Why disabled? The cultural understanding of physical disability in an African society" Disability and culture
  • Michael Davidson, "Universal Design: The Work of Disability in the Age of Globalization" Ereserves
  • Joseph Kisanji, "Attitudes and Beliefs about Disability in Tanzania"
  • Emma Stone, "Modern Slogan, Ancient Script: Impairment and Disability in the Chinese Language"
  • Keld Stochholm, "Digital Denmark (for Visually Impaired Children)"
  • Máirtín O Catháin,  "'Blind, But Not to the Hard Facts of Life': The Blind WorkersÕ Struggle in Derry, 1928 – 1940"
  • Andrew Potok, "Neighbors," A Matter of Dignity, (219-247)
  • M. Miles, "Disability on a Different Model: glimpses of an Asian heritage"
  • Miho Iwakuma, "Culture, Disability, And Disability Community: Notes On Differences And Similarities Between Japan And The United States," in ATENEA XXV
  • Baorong Guo,  John Bricout, and Jin Huang, "A common open space or a digital divide? A social model perspective on the online disability community in China"
  • Kathleen Ellis, "You Look Normal To Me: The Social Construction of Disability in Australian National Cinema in the 1990s"
  • World Health Organization, "WHO Cares about Africans Living with Disability"
  • Pamela Block "Sexuality, Parenthood, and Cognitive Disability in Brazil"
  • Mohamed Mohandes, "Automatic Translation of Arabic Text to Arabic Sign Language"
  • Nathan Oyori Ogechi, Sara Jerop Ruto, "Portrayal of Disability through Personal Names and Proverbs in Kenya; Evidence from Ekegusii and Nandi"

 

WEEK 8 (Feb 26) Intimacy and Ability

Readings:

  • Tom Shakespeare, "Love, Friendship, Intimacy" in Disability Rights and Wrongs
  • Anushka Asthana, "Meet Tyran and Leanne - they learnt of love and sex in a school for the disabled" : http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2007/oct/07/anushkaasthana.uknews
  • David Serlin, "Carney Landis and the Psychosexual Landscape of Touch in Mid-20th-Century America"
  • Barbara Waxman-Fiduccia, "Sexual Imagery of Physically Disabled Women: Erotic? Perverse? Sexist?"
  • Read at least through the end of Axiom 1 (p 325) from the abridged version of Eve Sedgwick's "Introduction: Axiomatic" from her book Epistemology of the Closet.

Films/Media:

  • View The Sessions (Film about Mark O'Brien to be released Oct 26) also Breathing Lessons (online)
  • To be shown during class time: This American Life, Season 2 Episode 1: "Escape" on Micahel Phelps
  • Other Clips screened in class:
    • Petra Kuppers and Sadie Wilcox, Tiresias, (USA, 2007)
    • Pratibha Parmar, Double the Trouble, Twice the Fun (England, 1992, 25 minutes)
    • Rodrigo Garcia, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her
    • Kirby Dick, Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997)
    • Selections from Push Girls
  • Quid Pro Quo
  • Whole
  • When I Walk

Further Reading:

  • Tom Shakespeare, Kath Gillespie-Sells & Dominic Davies, The Sexual Politics of Disability: Untold Desires
  • Tre Trefethen, "Pity Dates and the Paralyzed Playa," 21st Century Sexualities, Ed, Gilbert Herdt and Cymene Howe (pp 149-153)
  • Dominic Davies, "Sharing Our Stories, Empowering Our Lives: Don’t Dis Me!"
  • The Gimp Parade blog post on disability porn
  • Elizabeth Mariko Murray and Sarah Helaine Jacobs, "Revealing Moments: Representations of Disability and Sexuality"
  • Petra Kuppers, "Tiresian Journeys"
  • Tom Shakespeare, "Disabled Sexuality: Toward Rights and Recognition"
  • Hamilton, "Doing the Wild Thing"
  • Per Solvang, "The Amputee Body Desired: Beauty Destabilized? Disability Re-valued?"
  • L. F. Lowenstein, "Fetishes and Their Associated Behavior"
  • Kuppers et al-"OracuLar Practice, Crip Bodies and the Poetry of Collaboration"
  • Richard L. Bruno, "Devotees, Pretenders and Wannabes: Two Cases of Factitious Disability Disorder"
  • Raymond J. Aguilera, "Disability and Delight: Staring Back at the Devotee Community"
  • Tom Shakespeare, "The Role of Non-Disabled People in the World of Disability" in Diability Rights and Wrongs
  • Eva Feder Kittay, "Dependency, Difference, and Global Ethic of Longterm Care"
  • Karp, "The Art of Kissing"

 

WEEK 9 (March 5): Disability and Performance

Readings:

  • Petra Kuppers, "Dancing Autism: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Bedlam"
  • Chris Ann Strickling, "Actual Lives: Cripples in the House"
  • Jim Ferris, "Aesthetic Distance and the Fiction of Disability," Bodies in Commotion, Eds, Carrie Sandall and Philip Auslander
  • Patrick Anderson, "On Feeding Tubes"
  • Jessica Berson, "Performing Deaf Identity: Toward a Continuum of Deaf Performance," Bodies in Commotion, Eds, Carrie Sandall and Philip Auslander

Film/Media:

Further Reading:

  • Gerard Goggin, "Disability and the Ethics of Listening"
  • Rosemarie Garland Thomson, "Dares to Stares: Disable Women Performance Artists & the Dynamics of Staring," Bodies in Commotion, Eds, Carrie Sandall and Philip Auslander (30-41) ER
  • Petra Kuppers, "Deconstructing Images: Performing Disability" in Disability and Contemporary Performance (49-69)
  • Victoria Ann Lewis, "Radical Wallflowers: Disability and the People’s Theater"
  • Chris Ann Strickling, "Re/Presenting the Self: Autobiographical Performance by People with Disability"

Week 10 (March 12): Access and Assistive Technology: Media as Prosthetic, Digital Ability, Access and Universal Design

Reading:

  • Gerard Goggin, "Cellular Disability: Consumption Design and Access," Cell Phone Culture
  • Graham Pullin, Design Meets Disability, "Introduction","Identity Meets Ability", "Expression Meets Information"
  • Petra Kuppers, "New Technologies of Embodiment: Cyborgs and Websurfers" in Disability and Contemporary Performance
  • Faye Ginsburg, "Disability in the Digital Age", Digital Anthropology, Heather Horst &  Daniel Miller, eds.
  • Goggin and Newhall, Digital Disability, selections
  • Paul Jaeger, "Beyond Section 508" and selections from Disability and the Internet

Films/Media:

  • Regan Brashear, Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement (2014)
  • Clips shown in class:
    • Jamie Stobie, Freedom Machines (2004)
    • Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    • Josh Aronson, The Sound and the Fury (2000)
    • web sites to view

Further Reading:

  • Michael Smith, "Assistive Technology and Software: Liberating All of Us," The Disabled, the Media, and the Information Age, ed, J Nelson
  • Margaret M. Quinlan and Benjamin R. Bates, "Bionic Woman (2007): Gender, Disability and Cyborg"
  • Melati Sumari, Erika Carr, and Manjerngie Ndebe-Ngovo, "Diversity, Disability, and Geographic Digital Divide"
  • John Crandell and Lee Robinson, "The Visually Handicapped Person and Technology," The Disabled, the Media, and the Information Age, ed, J Nelson
  • Ingunn Moser and John Law, "Making Voices: New Media Technologies, Disabilities, and Articulation"
  • Tod Chambers, "Virtual Disability," in Cultural Studies, Medicine and Media, ed, Lester Friedman
  • Charles A Riley II, Disability and the Media, "Ch 8: On The Web We are all Equal"; appendix B: Guidelines for Web Accessibility,"
  • Seelman, "Universal Design and Orphan Technology: Do We Need Both?" available online
  • Alison Sheldon, "Disabled People and Communication Systems in the Twenty First Century"
  • Graeme Douglas, Christine Corcoran And Sue Pavey "The Role of the WHO ICF as a Framework to Interpret Barriers and to Inclusion: Visually Impaired People’s Views and Experiences of Personal Computers"
  • Wendy Seymour, and Lupton, Deborah, "Holding the Line Online: Exploring Wired Relationships for People with Disabilities"
  • Peter Anderberg, and Jönsson, Bodil, "Being there"
  • Paul Jaeger and Cynthia Ann Bowman, "Ch7: Accessability and Technology: Unequal Access Online" in Understanding Disability
  • Michael Steer and Leonie Cheetham, "Audio From Orbit: The Future Of Libraries For Individuals Who Are Blind Or Vision Impaired"
  • Stephanie Pendergrass, Margaret A. Nosek, and J. David Holcomb,  "Design and Evaluation of an Internet Site to Educate Women with Disabilities on Reproductive Health Care"
  • Bob Sapey, "Disablement in the Informational Age"
  • Baorong Guo,  John Bricout, and Jin Huang, "A common open space or a digital divide? A social model perspective on the online disability community in China"
  • Michele White, "Television and Internet Differences by Design: Rendering Liveness, Presence, and Lived Space"
  • Alistair Lee and Guy Morrow "Related Technology Disabling Web Designers: Issues Surrounding Disabled People's Use of Web"
  • Mohamed Mohandes, "Automatic Translation of Arabic Text to Arabic Sign Language"

 

Final Paper Due: Thursday, March 18th by 6pm

 

 


Other Topics:

Representing Cognitive Ability

  • Sue Boazman, "Inside Aphasia," Disability Discourse, Ed, Mairian Corker and Sally French. (pp 15-20) ER
  • Susan Gabel, "Depressed and Disabled: Some Discursive Problems with Mental Illness," Disability Discourse, Ed, Mairian Corker and Sally French. (pp 38-46) ER
  • Laura Lorenz, "Discovering a new identity after brain injury: A visual illness narrative"
  • Pamela Block "Sexuality, Parenthood, and Cognitive Disability in Brazil"
  • Alicia Broderick, and Ne'eman, Ari, "Autism As Metaphor: Narrative And Counter-Narrative"
  • Sara O'Neil, "The Meaning Of Autism: Beyond Disorder"

Communities and (dis)ability.

  • Carol Padden, "Talking Culture: Deaf People and Disability Studies"
  • Georgina Kleege, Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller
  • Brown, Steven E.  1997.  "'Oh, Don't You Envy Us Our Privileged Lives?' A Review Of The Disability Culture Movement."
  • Vic Finkelstein, "A Profession Allied to the Community: The disabled people's trade union" Disability And Development: Learning From Action And Research On Disability In The Majority World, Stone, E. (ed.)
  • Lennard Davis, "Deafness and the Riddle of Identity"
  • Sally French, "Don't look! The history of education for partially sighted children"
Ability, Identity and Activism

  • Tobin Siebers, "Chapter Two: Tender Organs, Narcissism and Identity Politics," (pp 34-52) and "Chapter 5: Disability as Masquerade," Disability Theory, (pp 97-119, and notes, pp 204-209) ER
  • Paul Jaeger and Cynthia Ann Bowman, "Ch 2: Social Classification of Reactions to Disability" (pp9-23); "Ch 6: Access and Classification of Disability in Legal Discourse" (pp75-83), in Understanding Disability: Inclusion Access, Diversity and Civil Rights ER
  • Michelle Jarman, Sharon Lamp, David Mitchell, Denise Nepveux, Nefertiti Nowell & Sharon Snyder, "Theorizing Disability as Political Subjectivity: work by the UIC Disability Collective on political Subjectivities"
  • Tobin Siebers, "Identity Politics, Then and Now"
  • John Swain & Sally French, "Towards an Affirmation Model of Disability"

Ability and Access to Cultural institutions: the museum, theater, etc

  • Jocelyn Dodd, Richard Sandell, Debbie Jolly and Ceri Jones , "Rethinking Disability Representation in Museums and Galleries"
  • Diane F. Britton, Barbara Floyd, and Patricia A. Murphy, "Overcoming Another Obstacle: Archiving a Community's Disabled History"
  • David Serlin, "Making Disability Public: An Interview with Katherine Ott"
  • Geoffrey Swan, Teresa Meade, J. Douglass Klein,  and David Serlin, "Licking Disability: Reflections on the Politics of Postage Stamps"
  • Amanda Kyser Bryan, "New Museum Theory In Practice: A Case Study Of The American Visionary Art Museum And The Representation Of Disability"
  • Wendy Constantine, "Museums and the 'Digital Curb Cut," http://www.museotech.com/?page_id=29
  • Blind at the Museum (Exhibition notes)
  • Seeing beyond Sight: Photos by Blind Teenagers http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/links/index.htm


Cyborgs and Super Crips

  • Johnson Cheu, "Degenerates, Replicants and Other Aliens: (re)deining Disability in Futuristicv Film"
  • Jennifer Parker Starbuck "Shifting Strengths: The Cyborg Theater of Cathy Weis," Bodies in Commotion, Eds, Carrie Sandall and Philip Auslander (95-108) ER
  • Rebecca Raphael, "The Doomsday Body, or Dr. Strangelove as Disabled Cyborg"
  • Jacquelyn Ford Morie, "Meaning and Emplacement in Expressive Immersive Virtual Environments"
  • Nickianne Moody, "Untapped Potential: The Representation of Disability/Special Ability in the Cyberpunk Workforce"

 

Disability and Representations of Dependency/Interdependency. (inclusion, independent living)

Creativity/Productivity/Inclusion: Art Mediating Ability

  • Sharon Snyder, "Infinities of Forms: Disability Figures in Artistic Traditions"
  • Linda Ware, "Worlds Remade: Inclusion Through Engagement With Disability Art"
  • Michael Davidson, “Aesthetics” Keywords in Disability Studies
  • Jocelyn Dodd, Richard Sandell, Debbie Jolly and Ceri Jones , Rethinking Disability Representation in Museums and Galleries(selections)
  • Katherine Sherwood, "Art, Medicine, and Disability"
  • Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Beauty and the Freak," Points of Contact, Eds, Crutchfield and Epstein (pp 181-196)
  • Nicholas Mirzoeff, "Blindness and Art," The Disibility Studies Reader ER
  • Mark Jeffreys, "The Visible Cripple," Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, Eds, Snyder, Bruggemann and Garland-Thomason. (pp31-39)
  • Joseph Grigely, "Post Cards to Sophie Calle," The Body Aesthetic: From Fine Art to Body Modification, Ed, Tobin Siebers (pp17-40).
  • Karen Alkalay-Gut, "Ode to Bob Flanagan," Points of Contact, Eds, Crutchfield and Epstein (pp 178-180) ER
  • David Hevey, "Ch3: Into the Grotto of Charity Advertising," (pp 18-29), "Ch4: Out of the Grotto," (pp 30-52), The Creatures Time Forgot
  • Suzanne Mahdi Wilks, "FEDA: Between Pedagogy & Politicized Art Practice" and http://www.feda.co.uk/
  • Tobin Siebers "Disability Aesthetics"
  • Susan E Bell, "Living With Breast Cancer In Text And Image: Making Art To Make Sense"
  • Ann Starr, "Looking in the Mirror: Images of Abnormally Developed Infants"
Films/Media:

  • Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell, Self-Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer
  • Bonnie Sherr Klein, Shameless, the Art of Disability (2006)

Film/Videography:

Todd Browning, Freaks

Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell, Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back

Shahar Rozen, Liebe, Perla

Josh Aronson, Sound and Fury

Jessica Yu, Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O' Brien

Diane Garey and Lawrence R. Hott, Through Deaf Eyes

Neil Marcus and Access Theater, Storm Reading http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnIkMdy2GiM

Southpark: Timmy's ADD missdiagnosis Episode http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hFDrU78nd0

Pierre-Louis Levacher, Sang froid/Cold Blood (France): http://video.aol.com/video-detail/sang-froidcold-blood/902085908

Francesca Martinez (british comedian with CP): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXE-gao8NMw

Billy Golfus and David E. Simpson, When Billy Broke His Head--and Other Tales of Wonder

Michael Moore, Sicko (USA, 2007)

Erik Skjoldbjaerg, Prozac Nation (2001)

Kirby Dick, Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Suprmasochist (USA, 1997)

Kazuo Hara, Good-Bye CP (Japan, 1972)

Unique Love (China, 2005)

Frontline: The Medicated Child (USA, 2008)

Shameless: the Art of Disability

Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell, Reva Leher

Frontline: Sick around the World (USA, 2008)

Robert Arnold, The Key of G (USA, 2007)

Tierney Gearon, The Mother Project

Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby (USA, 2004)

Benoit Delepine, Aaltra (Finland, 2004)

Amber Stanton and Jeff Pratt, Till Domestic Violence Do Us Part (USA, 2005)

Carlos Brooks, Quid Pro Quo (USA, 2008)

Melody Gilbert, Whole (USA, 2003)

Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro, Murderball (USA, 2005)

Firdaus Kanga and Pratibha Parmar, Double the trouble, twice the fun (USA, 1992)

Henry Corra and Graham Weinbren, George

Deaf Culture

Susan Hadary and Bill Whiteford, King Gimp

Ellen Goosenberg Kent, I Have Tourette's, but Tourette's Doesn't Have Me

Barry Levinson, Rain Man (USA, 1988)

David Lynch, The Elephant Man (USA, 1980)

Hunchback of Notre Dam

Irene Ward, A little history worth knowing (USA, 1998)

Randa Haines, Children of a Lesser God (USA, 1984)

Rodrigo Garcia, Things You Can Tell Without Even Talking to Her

Lewis Milestone, Of Mice and Men (USA, 1939)

Nadia Tass, The Miracle Worker (2000)

Paul Aaron, The Miracle Worker (USA, 1979)

Arthur Penn, The Miracle Worker (USA, 1962)

Robert Zemeckis, Forest Gump (USA, 1994)

Gary Sinise, Of Mice and Men (USA, 1992)

Jean Negulesco, Johnny Belinda (USA, 1948)

Nicholas Philibert, In the Land of the Deaf (France, 1992)

Frederick Wiseman, Blind (USA, 1986)

Frederick Wiseman, Deaf (USA, 1986)

Julian Schnabbel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (France, 2008)

Logan Smalley, Darius Goes West (2007)

John Huston Let there be light (1948)

Oliver Stone, Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Hal Ashby, Coming Home (1978)

Elisa Down, The Black Balloon (2008)