Disability Visibility
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"Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It's an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again." --Chicago Tribune 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. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, 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.
Redefining Disability
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The reality of disability-of what it means to be disabled-has primarily been written by non-disabled people. Disability and disabled individuals are often described with pity, presented as burdens, or are background figures in larger non-disabled narratives. Redefining Disability challenges the outsider-dominated approach to disability by centering the disabled experience. This edited volume, featuring all disabled authors and creators, combines traditional academic works with personal reflections, visual art, and poetry. These works address disability and race, sexuality and disability, disability cultures, accommodation, self-diagnosis, and how we manage the obstacles ableist institutions place in our way. The authors address a variety of disabilities, including sensory, chronic pain, mobility, developmental disorders, and mental illness. It is through these testimonies that we hope to redefine disability on our terms; to clearly state that disability is not a bad word, and that all disabled lives have value. Redefining Disability is interdisciplinary, with broad application for undergraduate courses, graduate seminars, or to read for pleasure. Each entry contains discussion questions and/or activities for educators to use in the classroom.
Signs of Disability
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How can we learn to notice the signs of disability? We see indications of disability everywhere: yellow diamond-shaped "deaf person in area" road signs, the telltale shapes of hearing aids, or white-tipped canes sweeping across footpaths. But even though the signs are ubiquitous, Stephanie L. Kerschbaum argues that disability may still not be perceived due to a process she terms "dis-attention." To tell better stories of disability, this multidisciplinary work turns to rhetoric, communications, sociology, and phenomenology to understand the processes by which the material world becomes sensory input that then passes through perceptual apparatuses to materialize phenomena--including disability. By adding perception to the understanding of disability's materialization, Kerschbaum significantly expands our understanding of disability, accounting for its fluctuations and transformations in the semiotics of everyday life. Drawing on a set of thirty-three research interviews focused on disabled faculty members' experiences with disability disclosure, as well as written narratives by disabled people, this book argues for the materiality of narrative, suggesting narratives as a means by which people enact boundaries around phenomena and determine their properties. Signs of Disability offers strategies and practices for challenging problematic and pervasive forms of "dis-attention" and proposes a new theoretical model for understanding disability in social, rhetorical, and material settings.
Business as unusual : Making workplaces inclusive of people with disabilities
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Visual Thinking
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NAUTILUS GOLD AWARD "A powerful and provocative testament to the diverse coalition of minds we'll need to face the mounting challenges of the twenty-first century." --Steve Silberman "An absolute eye-opener." --Frans de Waal A landmark book that reveals, celebrates, and advocates for the special minds and contributions of visual thinkers A quarter of a century after her memoir, Thinking in Pictures, forever changed how the world understood autism, Temple Grandin-- "an anthropologist on Mars," as Oliver Sacks dubbed her--transforms our awareness of the different ways our brains are wired. Do you have a keen sense of direction, a love of puzzles, the ability to assemble furniture without crying? You are likely a visual thinker. With her genius for demystifying science, Grandin draws on cutting-edge research to take us inside visual thinking. Visual thinkers constitute a far greater proportion of the population than previously believed, she reveals, and a more varied one, from the photo-realistic "object visualizers" like Grandin herself, with their intuitive knack for design and problem solving, to the abstract, mathematically inclined "visual spatial" thinkers who excel in pattern recognition and systemic thinking. She also makes us understand how a world increasingly geared to the verbal tends to sideline visual thinkers, screening them out at school and passing over them in the workplace. Rather than continuing to waste their singular gifts, driving a collective loss in productivity and innovation, Grandin proposes new approaches to educating, parenting, employing, and collaborating with visual thinkers. In a highly competitive world, this important book helps us see, we need every mind on board.