Disability by
This volume offers a rare mix of interpretive chapters and primary sources that will be of value to anyone interested in learning about important disability-related issues from the perspective of disabled people themselves. In the 21st century, disability rights have become a social justice issue that concerns all American citizens--access to safe, affordable, and effective health care, access to safe and affordable housing, access to reliable and efficient public transportation, and the ability to work and participate freely in the community and in society without fear of violence. Unlike encyclopedias or biographical dictionaries that only offer brief accounts of key topics, people, events, and organizations, Disability: A Reference Handbook provides important interpretive and analytical frameworks and meaningful primary evidence. The book opens with a chapter dedicated to the history of disability in the United States, placing 21st-century issues and concerns within their contexts. The next chapter explores important controversies and questions related directly to disability. The third chapter brings diverse voices to the topic, and the fourth chapter offers valuable profiles of key people and organizations. The remaining chapters provide valuable reference tools that will help readers to explore topics in more depth and to engage in independent research. Collects key primary documents and important analyses, provided by one of the leading scholars in the field of disability studies Weaves together decades of disability studies and disability history research in a well-rounded manner Reflects the author's expertise and gives readers access to important voices in perspectives chapters Arms readers with knowledge about what issues concern people with disabilities in the 21st century
People Living with Disabilities by
Poor health literacy has many negative consequences for achieving the quadruple aim of better care, improving the health of the community and the population, providing affordable care, and improving the work life of health care providers, and those consequences disproportionately affect those individuals with disabilities and those who experience health disparities. To better understand how health literacy, health equity, and health disparities intersect for individuals living with disabilities, the Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities and the Roundtable on Health Literacy jointly sponsored a workshop that was held on June 14, 2016, in Washington, DC. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
The Future of Disability in America by
The future of disability in America will depend on how well the U.S. prepares for and manages the demographic, fiscal, and technological developments that will unfold during the next two to three decades. Building upon two prior studies from the Institute of Medicine (the 1991 Institute of Medicine's report Disability in America and the 1997 report Enabling America), The Future of Disability in America examines both progress and concerns about continuing barriers that limit the independence, productivity, and participation in community life of people with disabilities. This book offers a comprehensive look at a wide range of issues, including the prevalence of disability across the lifespan; disability trends the role of assistive technology; barriers posed by health care and other facilities with inaccessible buildings, equipment, and information formats; the needs of young people moving from pediatric to adult health care and of adults experiencing premature aging and secondary health problems; selected issues in health care financing (e.g., risk adjusting payments to health plans, coverage of assistive technology); and the organizing and financing of disability-related research. The Future of Disability in America is an assessment of both principles and scientific evidence for disability policies and services. This book's recommendations propose steps to eliminate barriers and strengthen the evidence base for future public and private actions to reduce the impact of disability on individuals, families, and society.
Beyond Bioethics by
For decades, the field of bioethics has shaped the way we think about ethical problems in science, technology, and medicine. But its traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies such as assisted reproduction, human genetic modification, and DNA forensics. Beyond Bioethics addresses these provocative issues from an emerging standpoint that is attentive to race, gender, class, disability, privacy, and notions of democracy--a "new biopolitics." This authoritative volume provides an overview for those grappling with the profound dilemmas posed by these developments. It brings together the work of cutting-edge thinkers from diverse fields of study and public engagement, all of them committed to this new perspective grounded in social justice and public interest values.
Mental Disorders and Disabilities among Low-Income Children by
Children living in poverty are more likely to have mental health problems, and their conditions are more likely to be severe. Of the approximately 1.3 million children who were recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits in 2013, about 50% were disabled primarily due to a mental disorder. An increase in the number of children who are recipients of SSI benefits due to mental disorders has been observed through several decades of the program beginning in 1985 and continuing through 2010. Nevertheless, less than 1% of children in the United States are recipients of SSI disability benefits for a mental disorder. At the request of the Social Security Administration, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children compares national trends in the number of children with mental disorders with the trends in the number of children receiving benefits from the SSI program, and describes the possible factors that may contribute to any differences between the two groups. This report provides an overview of the current status of the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and the levels of impairment in the U.S. population under age 18. The report focuses on 6 mental disorders, chosen due to their prevalence and the severity of disability attributed to those disorders within the SSI disability program: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, learning disabilities, and mood disorders. While this report is not a comprehensive discussion of these disorders, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children provides the best currently available information regarding demographics, diagnosis, treatment, and expectations for the disorder time course - both the natural course and under treatment.
Aging and Disability by
Many different groups of people are subject to stereotypes. Positive stereotypes (e.g., oeolder and wiser ) may provide a benefit to the relevant groups. However, negative stereotypes of aging and of disability continue to persist and, in some cases, remain socially acceptable. Research has shown that when exposed to negative images of aging, older persons demonstrate poor physical and cognitive performance and function, while those who are exposed to positive images of aging (or who have positive self-perceptions of aging) demonstrate better performance and function. Furthermore, an individual (TM)s expectations about and perceptions of aging can predict future health outcomes. To better understand how stereotypes affect older adults and individuals with disabilities, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, with support from AARP, convened a public workshop on October 10, 2017. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Disability Histories by
The field of disability history continues to evolve rapidly. In this collection, Susan Burch and Michael Rembis present essays that integrate critical analysis of gender, race, historical context, and other factors to enrich and challenge the traditional modes of interpretation still dominating the field. Contributors delve into four critical areas of study within disability history: family, community, and daily life; cultural histories; the relationship between disabled people and the medical field; and issues of citizenship, belonging, and normalcy. As the first collection of its kind in over a decade, Disability Histories not only brings readers up to date on scholarship within the field but fosters the process of moving it beyond the U.S. and Western Europe by offering work on Africa, South America, and Asia. The result is a broad range of readings that open new vistas for investigation and study while encouraging scholars at all levels to redraw the boundaries that delineate who and what is considered of historical value. Informed and accessible, Disability Histories is essential for classrooms engaged in all facets of disability studies within and across disciplines.
Dangerous Pregnancies by
Dangerous Pregnancies tells the largely forgotten story of the German measles epidemic of the early 1960s and how it created national anxiety about dying, disabled, and "dangerous" babies. This epidemic would ultimately transform abortion politics, produce new science, and help build two of the most enduring social movements of the late twentieth century--the reproductive rights and the disability rights movements. At most a minor rash and fever for women, German measles (also known as rubella), if contracted during pregnancy, could result in miscarriages, infant deaths, and serious birth defects in the newborn. Award-winning writer Leslie J. Reagan chronicles for the first time the discoveries and dilemmas of this disease in a book full of intimate stories--including riveting courtroom testimony, secret investigations of women and doctors for abortion, and startling media portraits of children with disabilities. In exploring a disease that changed America, Dangerous Pregnancies powerfully illuminates social movements that still shape individual lives, pregnancy, medicine, law, and politics.
Black Madness :: Mad Blackness by
In Black Madness :: Mad Blackness Therí Alyce Pickens rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the common theorization that they are mutually constitutive. Pickens shows how Black speculative and science fiction authors such as Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Tananarive Due craft new worlds that reimagine the intersection of Blackness and madness. These creative writer-theorists formulate new parameters for thinking through Blackness and madness. Pickens considers Butler's Fledgling as an archive of Black madness that demonstrates how race and ability shape subjectivity while constructing the building blocks for antiracist and anti-ableist futures. She examines how Hopkinson's Midnight Robber theorizes mad Blackness and how Due's African Immortals series contests dominant definitions of the human. The theorizations of race and disability that emerge from these works, Pickens demonstrates, challenge the paradigms of subjectivity that white supremacy and ableism enforce, thereby pointing to the potential for new forms of radical politics.
Making Disability Modern by
Making Disability Modern: Design Histories brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary and national perspectives to examine how designed objects and spaces contributes to the meanings of ability and disability from the late 18th century to the present day, and in homes, offices, and schools to realms of national and international politics. The contributors reveal the social role of objects - particularly those designed for use by people with disabilities, such as walking sticks, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs - and consider the active role that makers, users and designers take to reshape the material environment into a usable world. But it also aims to make clear that definitions of disability--and ability--are often shaped by design.
Out of the Horrors of War by
From workplace accidents to polio epidemics and new waves of immigration to the returning veterans of World War II, the first half of the twentieth century brought the issue of disability--what it was, what it meant, and how to address it--into national focus. Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America explores the history of disability activism, concentrating on the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (AFPH), a national, cross-disability organization founded during World War II to address federal disability policy. Unlike earlier disability groups, which had been organized around specific disabilities or shared military experience, AFPH brought thousands of disabled citizens and veterans into the national political arena, demanding equal access to economic security and full citizenship. At its core, the AFPH legislative campaign pushed the federal government to move disabled citizens from the margins to the center of the welfare state. Through extensive archival research, Audra Jennings examines the history of AFPH and its enduring legacy in the disability rights movement. Counter to most narratives that place the inception of disability activism in the 1970s, Jennings argues that the disability rights movement is firmly rooted in the politics of World War II. In the years immediately following the war, leaders in AFPH worked with organized labor movements to advocate for an ambitious political agenda, including employer education campaigns, a federal pension program, improved access to healthcare and education, and an affirmative action program for disabled workers. Out of the Horrors of War extends the arc of the disability rights movement into the 1940s and traces how its terms of inclusion influenced the movement for decades after, leading up to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Fixing the Poor by
How state welfare politics--not just concerns with "race improvement"--led to eugenic sterilization practices. Honorable Mention, 2018 Outstanding Book Award, The Disability History Association Shortlist, 2019 Wallace K. Ferguson Prize, Canadian Historical Association Between 1907 and 1937, thirty-two states legalized the sterilization of more than 63,000 Americans. In Fixing the Poor, Molly Ladd-Taylor tells the story of these state-run eugenic sterilization programs. She focuses on one such program in Minnesota, where surgical sterilization was legally voluntary and administered within a progressive child welfare system. Tracing Minnesota's eugenics program from its conceptual origins in the 1880s to its official end in the 1970s, Ladd-Taylor argues that state sterilization policies reflected a wider variety of worldviews and political agendas than previously understood. She describes how, after 1920, people endorsed sterilization and its alternative, institutionalization, as the best way to aid dependent children without helping the "undeserving" poor. She also sheds new light on how the policy gained acceptance and why coerced sterilizations persisted long after eugenics lost its prestige. In Ladd-Taylor's provocative study, eugenic sterilization appears less like a deliberate effort to improve the gene pool than a complicated but sadly familiar tale of troubled families, fiscal and administrative politics, and deep-felt cultural attitudes about disability, dependency, sexuality, and gender. Drawing on institutional and medical records, court cases, newspapers, and professional journals, Ladd-Taylor reconstructs the tragic stories of the welfare-dependent, sexually delinquent, and disabled people who were labeled "feebleminded" and targeted for sterilization. She chronicles the routine operation of Minnesota's three-step policy of eugenic commitment, institutionalization, and sterilization in the 1920s and 1930s and shows how surgery became the "price of freedom" from a state institution. Combining innovative political analysis with a compelling social history of those caught up in Minnesota's welfare system, Fixing the Poor is a powerful reinterpretation of eugenic sterilization.
Disability Visibility by
A groundbreaking collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience- Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people whose daily lives are, in the words of playwright Neil Marcus, "an art . . . an ingenious way to live." A Vintage Books Original. ONE OF THE PROGRESSIVE'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent-but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people. From Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond- this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
Prophet Against Slavery by
The revolutionary life of an 18th-century dwarf activist who was among the first to fight against slavery and animal cruelty. Prophet Against Slavery is an action-packed chronicle of the remarkable and radical Benjamin Lay, based on the award-winning biography by Marcus Rediker that sparked the Quaker community to re-embrace Lay after 280 years of disownment. Graphic novelist David Lester brings the full scope of Lay's activism and ideas to life. Born in 1682 to a humble Quaker family in Essex, England, Lay was a forceful and prescient visionary. Understanding the fundamental evil that slavery represented, he would unflinchingly use guerrilla theatre tactics and direct action to shame slave owners and traders in his community. The prejudice that Lay suffered as a dwarf and a hunchback, as well as his devout faith, informed his passion for human and animal liberation. Exhibiting stamina, fortitude, and integrity in the face of the cruelties practiced against what he called his "fellow creatures," he was often a lonely voice that spoke truth to power. Lester's beautiful imagery and storytelling, accompanied by afterwords from Rediker and Paul Buhle, capture the radicalism, the humor, and the humanity of this truly modern figure. A testament to the impact each of us can make, Prophet Against Slavery brings Lay's prophetic vision to a new generation of young activists who today echo his call of 300 years ago: "No justice, no peace!"
Dear Senthuran by
FEATURED ON THE COVER OF TIME MAGAZINE AS A 2021 NEXT GENERATION LEADER "A once-in-a-generation voice." - Vulture "One of our greatest living writers." - Shondaland A full-throated and provocative memoir in letters from the New York Times bestselling author, "a dazzling literary talent whose works cut to the quick of the spiritual self" (Esquire) In three critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, and a boundless search for what it means to be free. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, the bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji reveals the harrowing yet resolute truths of their own life. Through candid, intimate correspondence with friends, lovers, and family, Emezi traces the unfolding of a self and the unforgettable journey of a creative spirit stepping into power in the human world. Their story weaves through transformative decisions about their gender and body, their precipitous path to success as a writer, and the turmoil of relationships on an emotional, romantic, and spiritual plane, culminating in a book that is as tender as it is brutal. Electrifying and inspiring, animated by the same voracious intelligence that distinguishes Emezi's fiction, Dear Senthuran is a revelatory account of storytelling, self, and survival.
The Disabled Detective by
The first book of its kind, The Disabled Detective explores representations of disability in crime fiction, from the earliest days of the genre to contemporary television drama. Susannah B. Mintz examines detective heroes with such conditions as blindness, deafness, paralysis, Asperger's, obsessive compulsive disorder, addiction, war trauma and many other impairments. Examining a wide range of texts, from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories and the works of Agatha Christie to contemporary crime writers such as Jeffrey Deaver and Michael Collins and television dramas such as Monk, this book highlights how often characters with disabilities have been the heroes of crime fiction and how rarely this has been discussed in contemporary criticism.
Ears, Eyes, and Hands - Reflections on Language, Literarcy, and Linguistics by
Ears, Eyes, and Hands presents the author's reflections on language, literacy, and linguistics that have been shaped by her deafness and by her work as an educator. In short, engaging narratives, Deborah L. Wolter exposes deeply entrenched attitudes and stereotypes regarding language, bringing to bear her own experiences as a deaf person as well as her interactions with children from varying backgrounds. ​​ Wolter reveals and rectifies the impact of deficit mindsets in the educational system regarding race, ethnicity, economic status, gender, and disability. As a literacy specialist, she works with students who fall through the cracks in a system that strives to embrace the diverse backgrounds and abilities found in the classroom. Her passion for engaging students and cultivating literacy shines in the stories she tells, which serve as parables that allow readers to evaluate their own attitudes and assumptions. Educators, parents, and community members will benefit from Wolter's examination of sociolinguistics and language privilege as she identifies how ethnocentrism and ableism are contributing to negative educational outcomes for some students. With humor and warmth, she offers a path toward approaching language and listening as a gateway to connection and understanding, both inside the classroom and beyond.
