Link: http://is.gd/LExBUn
In a new ten-part radio series, journalist Peter White uncovers new
historical sources revealing what life was like for those with physical
disabilities in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Disability: A New History, starting on BBC Radio 4 on 27 May,
is the first major series to explore the history of disability before
the 20th century. It draws on a wealth of new research by historians
across the country from sources including letters, diaries,
advertisements, even jokes - all of which reveal what daily life was
like for those with disabilities. This was an age before political
correctness, and although some of the language used is robust, attitudes
were often surprisingly compassionate.
The series sets out to challenge modern-day attitudes to disability, and
the archive sources provide direct access to voices from the past.
Throughout the series a rich variety of voices is heard: a man who
complains he is the 'only dwarf in Liverpool'; deaf children writing
home from institutions; a wounded soldier, struggling to walk with a
wooden leg; a society beauty disfigured by smallpox; 'freaks' who
exploited their extraordinary bodies on the streets of London - and made
a fortune. Dr David Turner from Swansea University is the academic
advisor to the series and an expert in disability history. He provides
academic insights throughout, in addition to a number of historians from
across the country.
Elizabeth Burke, Producer, says: "The great thing about radio is that we
can bring these voices to life, and give listeners a chance to hear
first-hand sources - many of which have not yet been published. Some of
these accounts are very funny, some are moving and inspiring. This is
cutting-edge historical research - it amounts almost to a new historical
movement. We wanted to explore what daily life was like for people with
physical disabilities, but also to look beyond that, to ideas of beauty
and deformity, wider concepts of what it means to be 'able-bodied' -
which had an impact on real people, then as now."
For presenter Peter White there is a strong and genuine sense of
personal discovery. As a blind man he has always wondered, where were
people like him in the past? "I never realised disabled people had a
history. History was what happened to everyone else," White says.
Gwyneth Williams, Controller BBC Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra, says: "I am
so pleased that Peter White, one of our most distinguished presenters,
has decided to take up this unexplored area of history. I am looking
forward to a challenging and original series which adds to Radio 4's
proud history coverage."
Notes for Editors
Disability: A New History runs for 10 consecutive weekdays at 1.45pm over a two-week period from Monday 27 May, with an hour-long omnibus edition on Friday nights at 8pm. It was commissioned by Jane Ellison for BBC Radio 4. The producer is Elizabeth Burke for Loftus.
Academic Advisor: Dr David Turner of Swansea University, who recently
published the first book-length study of physical disability in
18th-century England, Disability In Eighteenth-Century England:
Imagining Physical Impairment.
Historians featured: David Turner, Stephen King, Joanna Bourke , Judith
Hawley, Amanda Vickery, Tim Hitchcock, Julie Anderson, Irina Metzler,
Naomi Baker, Chris Mounsey, Vivienne Richmond, Caroline Nielsen, Mike
Mantin, Selina Mills.
Actors bringing life to the archived first-hand accounts: Gerard
McDermott, Euan Bailey, Emily Bevan, Jonathan Keeble, Madeleine Brolly.
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Oxford DERN Disability Symposium 2013
The 2013 Oxford Disability Equality Research Network Symposium
brings together United Kingdom and international theorists and
researchers to highlight current work on disability in society in the
areas of theory, disability law, assistive technology, and medical
research.
Oxford DERN is a collaboration between the Oxford Disability
Service, The Disabled Students Campaign of the Oxford Student
Union, and a variety of Oxford University's academic departments.
For more info or to register visit our website:
http://
May 7th, Okinaga Room, Wadham College | 9:45 - 3:30pm
PROGRAM FOR 2013:
09:45am
Registration / coffee
10:00am
Global Disability and Medical Charity Advertising
Clare Barker, University of Leeds
10:45am Q&A
11:00am Break
11:15am
The disabled body in post-Apartheid South Africa and its Literature
Tim Wyman-McCarthy, University of Oxford
11:35am
Reading Firdaus Kanga: Implicit Political Alignments and Disabled Gay
Parsi Men who Love Margaret Thatcher
Stephanie Yorke, University of Oxford
11:55am
Can the Social Model of Disability be Applied to Dyslexia and Other SpLDs?
Dwight R. Kelly, Sarah Lawrence College, USA
12:15pm Lunch (Provided)
01:00pm
Assistive Technologies Shaping the Learning Experiences of University
Students with Literacy Difficulties
Paul Grove, University of Oxford
01:30pm
Learning from Students who Identify with Asperger Syndrome
Nicola Martin, LSE
02:30pm
Implementing the National Autism Strategy for England (DH, March 2010);
Mind the Gaps
Marie Tidball, Oxford Centre for Crimonology
03:00pm Plenary
The Wadham facility is accessible for wheelchair users, but advance notice of all other accessibility
requirements is needed including dietary needs for lunch. Please contact dwight.kelly@wadh.ox.ac.uk for more information.
brings together United Kingdom and international theorists and
researchers to highlight current work on disability in society in the
areas of theory, disability law, assistive technology, and medical
research.
Oxford DERN is a collaboration between the Oxford Disability
Service, The Disabled Students Campaign of the Oxford Student
Union, and a variety of Oxford University's academic departments.
For more info or to register visit our website:
http://
May 7th, Okinaga Room, Wadham College | 9:45 - 3:30pm
PROGRAM FOR 2013:
09:45am
Registration / coffee
10:00am
Global Disability and Medical Charity Advertising
Clare Barker, University of Leeds
10:45am Q&A
11:00am Break
11:15am
The disabled body in post-Apartheid South Africa and its Literature
Tim Wyman-McCarthy, University of Oxford
11:35am
Reading Firdaus Kanga: Implicit Political Alignments and Disabled Gay
Parsi Men who Love Margaret Thatcher
Stephanie Yorke, University of Oxford
11:55am
Can the Social Model of Disability be Applied to Dyslexia and Other SpLDs?
Dwight R. Kelly, Sarah Lawrence College, USA
12:15pm Lunch (Provided)
01:00pm
Assistive Technologies Shaping the Learning Experiences of University
Students with Literacy Difficulties
Paul Grove, University of Oxford
01:30pm
Learning from Students who Identify with Asperger Syndrome
Nicola Martin, LSE
02:30pm
Implementing the National Autism Strategy for England (DH, March 2010);
Mind the Gaps
Marie Tidball, Oxford Centre for Crimonology
03:00pm Plenary
The Wadham facility is accessible for wheelchair users, but advance notice of all other accessibility
requirements is needed including dietary needs for lunch. Please contact dwight.kelly@wadh.ox.ac.uk for more information.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
New issue of Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies:
Volume 7, Issue 1
JLCDS
is available from Liverpool University Press, online and in print, to
institutional and individual subscribers; it is also part of the Project
MUSE collection to which the links below point.
Articles
“Usually I Love The Onion, but This Time You’ve Gone Too Far”: Disability Humour and Transgression
Tom Coogan (University of Birmingham)
The Ontology of Disability in Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered
Stephanie Hsu (Pace University, New York)
Disability Studies Reads the Romance
Ria Cheyne (Liverpool Hope University)
From “Freak Show” to “Charity Case”: The “Containment” of Deafness in Wilkie Collins’s Hide and Seek
Hannah Anglin-Jaffe (University of Exeter)
Regulating Affect and Reproducing Norms: Alice Munro’s “Child’s Play”
Dilia Narduzzi (Independent Scholar)
The Speed of Dark and This Alien Shore: Representations of Cognitive Difference
Katrina Arndt, and Maia Van Beuren (St John Fisher College, Rochester, New York)
From the Field
Conference Report: Theorizing Normalcy and the Mundane—3rd International Annual Conference, University of Chester
Cassie Ogden (University of Chester)
Book Reviews
Disability and Modern Fiction: Faulkner, Morrison, Coetzee and the Nobel Prize for Literature by Alice Hall (review)
Ria Cheyne (Liverpool Hope University)
Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture by Niall Richardson (review)
Dustin Galer (University of Toronto)
For more information, please contact:
Dr. David Bolt
Director, Centre for Culture & Disability Studies
Editor in Chief, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
Receive regular Table of Contents alerts here:
Lecturer, Education and Disability Studies
Founder, International Network of Literary & Cultural Disability Scholars
Email: boltd@hope.ac.uk
Telephone: 0151 291 3346
Office: HCA 0100
Postal address: Graduate School, Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, L16 9JD.
Out
Now: The Madwoman and The Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability,
edited by David Bolt, Julia Miele Rodas, and Elizabeth J. Donaldson
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Call for Papers: Victorian Body Parts
http://victorianbodyparts.
Call for Papers: Victorian Body Parts
St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum, Clerkenwell, United Kingdom Saturday 14th September 2013
The Victorian Body Parts Conference is an interdisciplinary event for postgraduate and early career researchers, and will be held on Saturday 14th September 2013 at St Bart’s Pathology Museum, Clerkenwell.
It is supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies and the Birkbeck Centre for 19th Century Studies.
The conference is being organised by Beatrice Bazell and Emma Curry, both in their 2nd year of PhD research at Birkbeck, working on representations of body parts in Victorian culture.
Why were the Victorians so interested in atomizing the body? What was causing nineteenth-century bodies to come apart at the seams? From articulated bones to beating hearts, from wooden legs to hair bracelets, from death masks to glass eyes, the Victorian body was chattering with its own discorporation.
The results of this fragmentation are successors to the recent scholarly work on material culture in examining the atomisation of the body as a symptom of being surrounded by the commodities generated by the nineteenth century. From objects under glass domes to pieces of the body in glass cases (authentic specimens of which fill St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum), commodification and dissection have much in common.
This conference thus seeks to explore, develop and enrich perspectives on the numerous and varied ways in which the Victorians approached their anatomy, bringing together postgraduate, early career and established researchers to consider why body parts provided such an urgent and stimulating focus within the nineteenth-century cultural imagination.
Possible topics could include, but are by no means limited to:
§ Mementos of the body and the culture of mourning
§ Disability and the “substitution” of the body part
§ Dress and the exaggeration of, or emphasis on, elements of the body
§ Darwin and bodily means of expression in science
§ The“queering” of the body part
§ Measuring the body: deviation from the standards of Western patriarchy
§ Preserving the body: collecting and museum cultures
Proposals of up to 300 words should be sent to victorianbodyparts@gmail.com<
Blog:victorianbodyparts.
Twitter: @victbodyparts
Call for Papers: Victorian Body Parts
St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum, Clerkenwell, United Kingdom Saturday 14th September 2013
The Victorian Body Parts Conference is an interdisciplinary event for postgraduate and early career researchers, and will be held on Saturday 14th September 2013 at St Bart’s Pathology Museum, Clerkenwell.
It is supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies and the Birkbeck Centre for 19th Century Studies.
The conference is being organised by Beatrice Bazell and Emma Curry, both in their 2nd year of PhD research at Birkbeck, working on representations of body parts in Victorian culture.
Why were the Victorians so interested in atomizing the body? What was causing nineteenth-century bodies to come apart at the seams? From articulated bones to beating hearts, from wooden legs to hair bracelets, from death masks to glass eyes, the Victorian body was chattering with its own discorporation.
The results of this fragmentation are successors to the recent scholarly work on material culture in examining the atomisation of the body as a symptom of being surrounded by the commodities generated by the nineteenth century. From objects under glass domes to pieces of the body in glass cases (authentic specimens of which fill St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum), commodification and dissection have much in common.
This conference thus seeks to explore, develop and enrich perspectives on the numerous and varied ways in which the Victorians approached their anatomy, bringing together postgraduate, early career and established researchers to consider why body parts provided such an urgent and stimulating focus within the nineteenth-century cultural imagination.
Possible topics could include, but are by no means limited to:
§ Mementos of the body and the culture of mourning
§ Disability and the “substitution” of the body part
§ Dress and the exaggeration of, or emphasis on, elements of the body
§ Darwin and bodily means of expression in science
§ The“queering” of the body part
§ Measuring the body: deviation from the standards of Western patriarchy
§ Preserving the body: collecting and museum cultures
Proposals of up to 300 words should be sent to victorianbodyparts@gmail.com<
Blog:victorianbodyparts.
Twitter: @victbodyparts
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Invitation To Dance: A Documentary Film By Simi Linton & Christian Von Tippelskirch
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New article by Professor Martha Stoddard Holmes
Body Without Organs
Martha Stoddard Holmes
http://www.postroadmag.com/24/folios/holmes.phtml
Her biography:
Martha Stoddard Holmes, M.A., Ph.D
Professor & Chair
Department of Literature & Writing Studies
California State University
San Marcos, California
Trained as a fiction writer (M.A.) and then as a scholar of Victorian literature and culture (Ph.D.), my primary research and teaching emphasis has been disability studies. Disability studies is the critical analysis of disability as a culturally-constructed identity category similar to race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, rather than as an essential and a historical truth about certain kinds of bodies. I explore disability as a mode of representing bodies in visual and written texts, and as a way of organizing the social world and power relations on the basis of human bodily variation. Fictions of Affliction, my book on the way Victorian literary, medical, and social work discourse conferred meaning to bodily impairment (2004), was reissued in paperback in 2009 in University of Michigan Press’s "Corporealities" series. More recent work explores cancer culture, specifically popular representations of ovarian cancer and graphic narratives (comics) about cancer. I have also coedited (with Diane P. Freedman) the collection The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Classroom (SUNY P, 2003) and special issues of Journal of Medical Humanities (with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson), Literature and Medicine (with Tod Chambers), and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (with Mark Mossman).
I have had the privilege of teaching literature and medicine electives at Dartmouth and University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Medical Schools, under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph O’Donnell and Dr. Lawrence J. Schneiderman. At Cal State San Marcos, I engage disability studies and medical humanities/medical ethics issues with undergraduates and graduate students in a range of cultural/body studies seminars as well as in courses on British literature and children’s literature and culture.
I am an associate editor of the journals Literature and Medicine, J. Medical Humanities, J. Bioethical Inquiry, and J. Literary and Cultural Studies of Disability, and a special-interest delegate of the Modern Language Association (MLA) for disability issues.
Martha Stoddard Holmes
http://www.postroadmag.com/24/folios/holmes.phtml
Her biography:
Martha Stoddard Holmes, M.A., Ph.D
Professor & Chair
Department of Literature & Writing Studies
California State University
San Marcos, California
Trained as a fiction writer (M.A.) and then as a scholar of Victorian literature and culture (Ph.D.), my primary research and teaching emphasis has been disability studies. Disability studies is the critical analysis of disability as a culturally-constructed identity category similar to race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, rather than as an essential and a historical truth about certain kinds of bodies. I explore disability as a mode of representing bodies in visual and written texts, and as a way of organizing the social world and power relations on the basis of human bodily variation. Fictions of Affliction, my book on the way Victorian literary, medical, and social work discourse conferred meaning to bodily impairment (2004), was reissued in paperback in 2009 in University of Michigan Press’s "Corporealities" series. More recent work explores cancer culture, specifically popular representations of ovarian cancer and graphic narratives (comics) about cancer. I have also coedited (with Diane P. Freedman) the collection The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Classroom (SUNY P, 2003) and special issues of Journal of Medical Humanities (with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson), Literature and Medicine (with Tod Chambers), and Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (with Mark Mossman).
I have had the privilege of teaching literature and medicine electives at Dartmouth and University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Medical Schools, under the mentorship of Dr. Joseph O’Donnell and Dr. Lawrence J. Schneiderman. At Cal State San Marcos, I engage disability studies and medical humanities/medical ethics issues with undergraduates and graduate students in a range of cultural/body studies seminars as well as in courses on British literature and children’s literature and culture.
I am an associate editor of the journals Literature and Medicine, J. Medical Humanities, J. Bioethical Inquiry, and J. Literary and Cultural Studies of Disability, and a special-interest delegate of the Modern Language Association (MLA) for disability issues.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Pushed Over The edge By Benefits Fear
12/6/12
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10:22 PM (15 minutes ago)
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hi samuel...... i
hope your well and had a good xmas,new year,an now easter,,,,sorry i
havent bin in touch,,,,with having two court cases to prepare for an not
being able to pay bill ect,i have been so depressed pluss with my uncle
killing him self the day before my birthday..........i just though you
would like an update on peter
Pushed over the edge by benefits fear
Last updated at 11:39, Thursday, 28 March 2013
A WOMAN whose
disabled partner was found hanged is warning of the “devastating’’
effects of impending changes to disability benefits.
Christine Graham is speaking out after attending the
inquest of 49-year-old Peter Hodgson, which returned a verdict of
suicide last Friday.Mr Hodgson was found dead at his Cleator Moor home just a day after he received a text message telling him to attend the Jobcentre. He had previously sent Christine, his partner of 13 years, a text saying: “I give up.’’
Now, only days before the Disability Living Allowance is replaced by a new scheme, Christine continues to be concerned about those who face upheaval due to the changes.
“Peter was vulnerable,’’ she said. “The text scared him so much. He had been depressed for years but he could keep that under control. It was the text which pushed him over.
“I want people to realise the effect of these changes on people’s lives. These changes are terrifying to vulnerable people and their concerns need to be listened to.
“It can have a devastating effect on people’s lives. As someone said after Peter died, he won’t be the first person to die because of this, and he won’t be the last.’’
Mr Hodgson had been unable to work after he suffered a brain haemorrhage and a stroke and had his leg fused following a football injury. He had previously worked as a lifeguard and at Brannan’s Thermometers.
Christine said: “You only had to look at Peter to realise he couldn’t work.’’
Mr Hodgson also wore a calliper and couldn’t grip with his hand. He had been worried that if he didn’t take some sort of work, his benefits would be stopped.
Last July, Mr Hodgson had been called into Whitehaven Jobcentre to see whether he would be suitable for volunteer work. He subsequently received a text on the afternoon of November 26. The message didn’t state a date but a subsequent letter was sent days after Mr Hodgson’s death with an appointment for December 17.
It was this text, Christine said, which had pushed her partner over the edge.
Four months after his death, Christine is trying to move on with her life. “I’m managing and I know nothing will bring Peter back. But I still believe if he hadn’t received the text he would still be here now. He had been perfectly fine until then.’’
After The Whitehaven News ran Peter’s story in December, there was an overwhelming response from readers.
From April 8, Disability Living Allowance, or DLA – the benefit which helps many pay for care and mobility costs – is being scrapped and more than two million disabled people will lose the support they rely on. The replacement – Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – is designed to cut £2.24billion annually from the welfare budget by 2015-16. The number eligible for the new award will be smaller and the assessment criteria are narrower.
According to the Government, the changes will see around 500,000 people lose their benefit.
Speaking this week about the new disability reforms, the Paralympian and campaigner Tanni Grey-Thompson, said: “People are either shown as amazing Paralympians who are competing for their country, who are incredible individuals, or benefit scroungers. What I don’t want to see is disabled people ghettoised and locked away like it was when I was young. The danger is if we just keep knocking disabled people back then we’ll turn the clock back 30 years.”
First published at 11:34, Thursday, 28 March 2013
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