Disability Blog Carnival #60 is up NOW!

[Visual description: First Disability Blog Carnival logo by Kay Olson, features a parking sign that says "Somewhat Disabled" and the words "Disability Blog Carnival (come share the uncertainty)."]

Go, go, check it out at at FWD/Forward--- the theme is intersectionality and it's chock-full of links to great posts on that and other subjects. And while you're there, read the rest of this excellent new(ish) group blog. It's a daily stop on my blogsurfing tour.

Hey, and did you notice, that's SIXTY editions of the Disability Blog Carnival? Very cool. Thanks to all the past hosts, contributors, writers, readers, commenters... you all make for a terrific event I look forward to every time, and I think a lot of other people look for it and learn from it too.

Next edition --#61-- is at Alison Bergblom Johnson's blog, Writing Mental Illness. It'll go up on December 13, but she's requesting submissions by December 4, on the topic "Telling Disability" if you like, or you're also free to submit links to other recent posts you'd like to share with the wider 'sphere.

CFP: Disability History (25-27 June 2010, Preston UK)

News from the disability history community, found on H-Disability today:

Disability History Conference 2010

Disability History: looking forward to a better past?
June 25th - 27th, 2010

University of Central Lancashire
Preston, UK

Plenary Speakers:
Professor Catherine J Kudlick, University of California, Davis
Professor Tom Shakespeare, University of Newcastle

Disability history has emerged in recent years as an increasingly
popular sub-discipline of historical research, covering social,
cultural, medical, practical, gendered, technological and linguistic
aspects of the lives of those seen by society as having ‘disabled’
bodies and minds. The Disability History Group are pleased to announce
their latest conference. ‘Disability History: looking forward to a
better past?’ which promotes the DHG’s goal to advance research into
the history of disability. It is hoped the conference will broaden the
scope of disability history and deliver fresh and dynamic perspectives
on the way disability has been used to legitimate and understand norms,
social relations, inequality, and oppression. This includes historical
research into individuals, groups and institutions, as well as
representations/constructions and perspectives on disability.

The overarching theme of this conference is ‘Where are we, how did we
get here and where are we going next?’. To this end, the conference is
dedicated to an evaluation of all aspects of disability history at
regional, national and international levels. In ‘looking forward to a
better past’, the DHG hopes to encourage lively and informed debate on
the current state of disability history; how the discipline has emerged
and arrived at this point; and where scholars working in the discipline
will go in the future. However, paper topics are not prescriptive - we
invite potential speakers to consider the ways that their current
research has emerged and its context within the sub-discipline of
disability history.

The DHG invites panel or individual contributions from scholars and
postgraduates working in this field, and is keen to consider papers on a
wide range of topics. Papers covering all aspects of disability history,
as well as papers on the historical and future development of disability
history, are welcomed.

Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to Dr Martin Atherton:
matherton1@uclan.ac.uk by March 31, 2010.

The Complete Streets Movement

According to a recent post at StreetsBlog, the U.S. DOT has begun actively touting its contributions to bicycle and transit infrastructure, including last week's premiere of the Washington D.C. Bikestation [see flickr slideshow below]. The Bicycle Foundation of Greater Philadelphia on their blog bikePHL [story link] takes this one step further, promoting a vision of Complete Streets, responsive to the needs of all users including those with disabilities, as an important first step towards promoting complete communities. This is the first I have heard of this movement, but it seems like an exciting adjunct to the more widely recognized principle of universal design. Are you aware of "complete streets" approaches to design that have taken root in your communities? If so, the editors of DS,TU would love to hear about them.

November 5: Pierangelo Bertoli (1942-2002)

[Visual description: color photograph of a man in a wheelchair, at a microphone, wearing a black jacket, gesturing with his right hand.]

"....solo alla morte non c'é rimedio..."

Italian singer-songwriter Pierangelo Bertoli was born on this date in 1942, in a working-class family in Modena. When he was four years old, he survived polio, and came to use a wheelchair. He taught himself to play guitar and recorded his first album in 1973. He was a popular figure in Italian music until his death in 2002. His last album, 301 guerra fa (2002), was a collaboration with his son Alberto, also a musician.

Bertoli was a political lyricist, noted for songs about the environment and peace, and worked for the removal of architectural and social barriers for disabled people in Italy. He appeared in an Italian television spot demonstrating the inaccessibility of phone booths. Wish I could find that on YouTube, but meanwhile there are plenty of performance videos of Bertoli, if you're curious.

Taking the Water Cure, Brattleboro VT, 1845

New materials just cataloged at the Connecticut Historical Society Library include a journal from a mother/daughter trip to "take the cure" in Vermont:

In 1845 Sarah Coit Day and her daughter Catherine traveled to the Brattleboro (Vermont) Water-Cure for treatment. Day kept a journal (Ms. 47047), writing about taking tepid baths, walking, the view of the Connecticut River, and other people who were also at the facility. Though not mentioned in the journal, the Brattleboro Water-Cure was attended by many well-to-do people, including Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister, Catharine Beecher.

If you're in New England and looking for a small history project, this journal--an inside report from a treatment facility in the 1840s--might be worth a visit.

This is also in the same list of new catalog items at the same library:

...[T]he Boston and Albany Railroad Co. Surgeon’s record (Ms. 36423). This is a record of incidents occurring on railroad property. Each entry contained the name of the injured individual, their position with the company, what happened,and where they resided (if they survived). Injuries reported included fingers being crushed, ankles being twisted, and more gruesome occurrences, such as bowels being torn open.

Might be a very useful source on occupational injuries, and with names and addresses it might be linkable to other sources, and the start of a nice study.

Save the Dates: Events at UCLA in February 2010

I just found out about this stuff on the Center for the Study of Women calendar website. I don't know anymore than I'm posting here, so you'll have to track after the details yourself. Try the website for The Body Symposium Series for starters. All events are free and open to the public, but as always for campus events, you should plan ahead for things like parking.

Wednesday 17 February
Glorya Kaufman Hall
4pm-7pm
AXIS/Access-Ability: Choreographing Disability
with Petra Kuppers and Victoria Marks
Talk-back with Judith Smith and member of the AXIS Dance Company
led by Susan Leigh Foster, Professor, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures

Thursday 18 February
Humanities 193
4pm-6pm
Disability, Queerness, and Spaces of Normativity
Robert McRuer, George Washington University: "Disabling Sex: Notes Toward a Crip Theory of Sexuality"
David Serlin, UC San Diego: "Was the Elephant Man Gay?"
Respondent: Helen Deutsch, UCLA
Chair: Arthur Little, UCLA

The Encyclopedia of American Disability History

[Image description: Three volumes of the Encyclopedia of American Disability History, overlapping each other, on a table]

Just realized I hadn't posted about this here yet--the Encyclopedia of American Disability History (Facts-on-File 2009) is now out, for real, in print. And it's heavy, too. If you're a longtime reader here, you may notice that several entries seem eerily familiar; that's because they started as blog posts right here at DS,TU. I wrote about 25 entries in the encyclopedia, and compiled the "common quotes" feature, and a lot of recent dates for the timeline (again, by looking through the DS,TU archives!).

Institute on Disabilities to move to new TempleU campus location

Gettis Student Center @ Temple, originally uploaded by Edu-Tourist.

In case you haven't heard the news yet, the Institute on Disabilities will be moving in mid-November to a new location on the Temple University Campus. We are excited by the opportunity be so close to this vibrant hub of activity on the Temple University campus. Watch this space for news on our open house in December 2009 or Junuary 2010.