Thursday, June 10, 2004

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Passing on a new find: The Spring issue of Disability Studies Quarterly has a special section with the theme "Education and Disability Studies." You will want to take a look at the articles.

In their Introduction, Susan Gabel and Scot Danforth discuss the history of the special interest group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) entitled "Disability Studies in Education" (DSE). Included: news on their ill-fated journal Disability, Culture and Education and their new book series contract with Peter Lang Publishing. The first publication in this series will be Reading Resistance: Discourses of Exclusion in Desegregation and Inclusion Debates, by Beth Ferri and David Connor.
Temple University is one of a number of universities across the country offering Disability Studies degrees and certificates. Take a look at this page. Find the one near you, or e-mail me if you find listings to be added, changed or removed.
"Finding Nemo": a great disability movie! This mother and daughter review (Meecha Corbett and Corbett O'Toole) appeared in Disability World #22 (Jan-Mar 2004).

Saturday, June 05, 2004

From my initial perusal of the arena of blogs on educational topics, I find that blogging itself becomes the most frequent topic of discussion. Here one hopes this will not become the case - but I must confess that I have been thinking about ways that I can include electronic portfolios in my teaching activities at Temple University. Soon I will have more news to share on my experiments in fall 2004 classes.
Writer Gloria AnzaldĂșa died on May 18, 2004 at the age 61 - I've only today learned of this tremendous loss. Gloria AnzaldĂșa's work and presence was very important for my development as a scholar and as a person. I had the honor of meeting her twice. The first time was when she came as a guest of the Women's Studies Department to Penn State where I was a masters student. The second time I had the pleasure of interviewing her during during her visit to Lexington, Kentucky for the 1993 Women Writers Conference at the University of Kentucky.

Our two-hour conversation that evening in Kentucky covered a range of topics relating to her book Borderlands/La Frontera (1987), the conference she had just completed, and her recent diagnosis of diabetes. As I noted in the introduction to the published interview, we discussed the various "socio-spatial relations where borderlands work takes place: between two lovers; between doctor and patient; between the United States and its Norteamericano neighbors; between different 'American' ethnic groups thrown into the 'Hispanic' umbrella; between the girl-child and international machismo culture; between non-Western literature and the academy" (p. 76). The interview was conducted by members of the editorial collective appeared in the fourth volume of the annual journal disClosure (1994-1995), edited and published by graduate students pursuing the Certificate in Social Theory at the University of Kentucky. More information on subscribing to the journal and purchasing back issues can found at the website of the University of Kentucky Committee on Social Theory.
As we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision, NPR reporter Joel Shapiro examines the ways that lawyers used the decision to argue on behalf of children with disabilities.NPR : Brown v. Board
A blog/site exploring the application of universal design in the international travel and hospitality industry. Rolling Rains Report