Research & Reference Materials (Log in Required)
- Ableism: Credo ReferenceAccess the Credo Reference landing page for ableism. This page includes links to library materials, a mind map, and more.
- Exploring experiences of ableism in academia: a constructivist inquiryTo understand the experiences of the disabled in academia, a fully accessible and inclusive workshop conference was held in March 2018. Grounded in critical disability studies within a constructivist inquiry analytical approach, this article provides a contextualisation of ableism in academia garnered through creative data generation. The nuanced experiences of disabled academics in higher education as well as their collective understandings of these experiences as constructed through normalisation and able-bodiedness are presented. We show that disabled academics are marginalised and othered in academic institutions; that the neoliberalisation of higher education has created productivity expectations, which contribute to the silencing of the disabled academics’ perspectives and experiences due to constructions of normality and stigmatisation; and that it is important to enact policies, procedures, and practices that value disabled academics and bring about cultural and institutional changes in favour of equality and inclusion.
Overcoming Ableism: What You Don't Know As An Able Bodied Person
Naty Rico shares her story of struggles over the past 3 years at UCIrvine and the hopes she has for the future.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1xnyVCBYNQ
Internet Resources
- 4 Ways Ableism Still Affects People with DisabilitiesAbleism is the discrimination against people with disabilities, essentially the cause of many disparities youth and people of all ages face in the disability community. There are many different examples of ableism like discrimination and “able privilege,” which refers to the way our society is structured in favor of able-people.
- Ableism: National Conference for Community and JusticeThis page from the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) includes definitions involving ableism, history, videos, articles/handouts, statistics, and questions to ponder.
- Ableism: the undiagnosed malady afflicting medicineMedicine has traditionally been viewed as a benevolent discipline in which every human life is valued equally, without any form of prejudice or discrimination. Although this may remain the ideal to which medicine aspires, the reality is that, as individuals, medical professionals are not immune to the influence of dominant societal understandings of, and attitudes toward, individuals and groups of people deemed to be “others.”
- How Ableism Affects People with DisabilitiesAbleism is a form of discrimination against people with disabilities, being seen as lesser or having their access controlled based on their abilities. In 2015, then presidential candidate Donald Trump mocked a reporter with a disability at a rally by pretending to suffer from muscle spasms. Ableism is still prominent in society. DO-IT Ambassadors and Scholars were eager to share their experiences in this regard.
- Why You Need to Stop Using These Words and PhrasesThis Harvard Business Review article, written by Rakshitha Arni Ravishanker, addresses the phrases used to dehumanize or marginalize people with disabilities.
Changing The Way We Talk About Disability
You can take a wheelchair just about anywhere. Amy addresses societal perceptions of disability and her vision for how we all change the way we approach disability. Amy has been a wheelchair user for the past ten years; she has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare genetic condition that causes weak tissues, joint dislocation, chronic pain and fatigue. In spite of this, Amy lives an exciting and hugely positive life, travelling the world, working as a graphic designer for a charity and campaigning to change the way society understands disability. Most recently, Amy has published for Buzzfeed on her three-month adventure around South East Asia, writing about, filming, and photo-documenting her experiences in her wheelchair.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WIP1VgPnco
Books & Films: Check Out at McKee Library
I Live a Life Like Yours
"A quietly brilliant book that warms slowly in the hands." --Dwight Garner,The New York Times I am not talking about surviving. I am not talking about becoming human, but about how I came to realize that I had always already been human. I am writing about all that I wanted to have, and how I got it. I am writing about what it cost, and how I was able to afford it. Jan Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three. Shifting between specific periods of his life--his youth with his parents and sister in Norway; his years of study in Berkeley, St. Petersburg, and Amsterdam; and his current life as a professor, husband, and father--he intersperses these histories with elegant, astonishingly wise reflections on the world, social structures, disability, loss, relationships, and the body: in short, on what it means to be human. Along the way, Grue moves effortlessly between his own story and those of others, incorporating reflections on philosophy, film, art, and the work of writers from Joan Didion to Michael Foucault. He revives the cold, clinical language of his childhood, drawing from a stack of medical records that first forced the boy who thought of himself as "just Jan" to perceive that his body, and therefore his self, was defined by its defects. I Live a Life Like Yours is a love story. It is rich with loss, sorrow, and joy, and with the details of one life: a girlfriend pushing Grue through the airport and forgetting him next to the baggage claim; schoolmates forming a chain behind his wheelchair on the ice one winter day; his parents writing desperate letters in search of proper treatment for their son; his own young son climbing into his lap as he sits in his wheelchair, only to leap down and run away too quickly to catch. It is a story about acceptingone's own body and limitations, and learning to love life as it is while remaining open to hope and discovery.
Ableist Rhetoric: How We Know, Value, and See Disability
Ableism, a form of discrimination that elevates "able" bodies over those perceived as less capable, remains one of the most widespread areas of systematic and explicit discrimination in Western culture. Yet in contrast to the substantial body of scholarly work on racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism, ableism remains undertheorized and underexposed. In this book, James L. Cherney takes a rhetorical approach to the study of ableism to reveal how it has worked its way into our everyday understanding of disability. Ableist Rhetoric argues that ableism is learned and transmitted through the ways we speak about those with disabilities. Through a series of textual case studies, Cherney identifies three rhetorical norms that help illustrate the widespread influence of ableist ideas in society. He explores the notion that "deviance is evil" by analyzing the possession narratives of Cotton Mather and the modern horror touchstone The Exorcist. He then considers whether "normal is natural" in Aristotle's Generation of Animals and in the cultural debate over cochlear implants. Finally, he shows how the norm "body is able" operates in Alexander Graham Bell's writings on eugenics and in the legal cases brought by disabled athletes Casey Martin and Oscar Pistorius. These three simple equivalencies play complex roles within the social institutions of religion, medicine, law, and sport. Cherney concludes by calling for a rhetorical model of disability, which, he argues, will provide a shift in orientation to challenge ableism's epistemic, ideological, and visual components. Accessible and compelling, this groundbreaking book will appeal to scholars of rhetoric and of disability studies as well as to disability rights advocates.
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
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.
Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education
This is the new edition of the award-winning guide to social justice education. Based on the authors' extensive experience in a range of settings in the United States and Canada, the book addresses the most common stumbling blocks to understanding social justice. This comprehensive resource includes new features such as a chapter on intersectionality and classism; discussion of contemporary activism (Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More); material on White Settler societies and colonialism; pedagogical supports related to "common social patterns" and "vocabulary to practice using"; and extensive updates throughout. Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, Is Everyone Really Equal? is a detailed and engaging textbook and professional development resource presenting the key concepts in social justice education. The text includes many user-friendly features, examples, and vignettes to not just define but illustrate the concepts. Book Features: Definition Boxes that define key terms. Stop Boxes to remind readers of previously explained ideas. Perspective Check Boxes to draw attention to alternative standpoints. Discussion Questions and Extension Activities for using the book in a class, workshop, or study group. A Glossary of terms and guide to language use.
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
Finalist, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centres the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Leah writes passionately and personally about creating spaces by and for sick and disabled queer people of colour, and creative "collective access" -- access not as a chore but as a collective responsibility and pleasure -- in our communities and political movements. Bringing their survival skills and knowledge from years of cultural and activist work, Piepzna-Samarasinha explores everything from the economics of queer femme emotional labour, to suicide in queer and trans communities, to the nitty-gritty of touring as a sick and disabled queer artist of colour. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of colour are doing to find each other and to build power and community, and a toolkit for everyone who wants to build radically resilient, sustainable communities of liberation where no one is left behind. Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.
Nothing about Us, Without Us
James Charlton has produced a ringing indictment of disability oppression, which, he says, is rooted in degradation, dependency, and powerlessness and is experienced in some form by five hundred million persons throughout the world who have physical, sensory, cognitive, or developmental disabilities. Nothing About Us Without Us is the first book in the literature on disability to provide a theoretical overview of disability oppression that shows its similarities to, and differences from, racism, sexism, and colonialism. Charlton's analysis is illuminated by interviews he conducted over a ten-year period with disability rights activists throughout the Third World, Europe, and the United States. Charlton finds an antidote for dependency and powerlessness in the resistance to disability oppression that is emerging worldwide. His interviews contain striking stories of self-reliance and empowerment evoking the new consciousness of disability rights activists. As a latecomer among the world's liberation movements, the disability rights movement will gain visibility and momentum from Charlton's elucidation of its history and its political philosophy of self-determination, which is captured in the title of his book. Nothing About Us Without Us expresses the conviction of people with disabilities that they know what is best for them. Charlton's combination of personal involvement and theoretical awareness assures greater understanding of the disability rights movement.