Disability Blog Carnival #69 is up NOW!

And has been up for a while--but I was away from the internet on a family vacation and couldn't post about it until now. Thanks to Kali at Brilliant Mind, Broken Body, who has gathered a nice collection of links around the theme of "distance." Go have a read, link away, and leave a comment too.

Next month's edition will be hosted by Astrid at Astrid's Journal, who writes to me that the "theme will be identity, and the deadline for submissions will be Sept 21." Watch for that carnival on Sept 24. And submit a great link! A community of contributors makes the hosting job more enjoyable.

Vacation pictures? Sure! An accessible self-catering lodge in rural Scotland, ours for a few days of a family trip--worked for us, anyway:


[Visual description: exterior of a stone one-story building with a long ramp to the door; a picnic table and a patch of green grass are nearby.]

August 10: Hugh Morriston Davies (1879-1965)

I wrote this post last weekend, planning to put it up on Tuesday the 10th. Obviously other matters became more urgent. So I'm going to put this up now. --Ed.

You know the plotline if you've seen any medical dramas on TV: A gifted surgeon is in an accident, or maybe the victim of a crime, or perhaps falls very ill. He (it's usually a "he") survives, but....gasp! his hand! Injured beyond repair. He can never do surgery again. Might as well forget medicine as a career.

Or not.

Welshman Hugh Morriston Davies (1879-1965) lived this drama, but with a very different outcome. He was, certainly, a gifted and pioneering thoracic surgeon in London in the 1910s. By age 27 he was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was the first surgeon to detect lung cancer by x-ray. He "performed the first anatomical dissection lobectomy for a tumor of the lung in 1912... decades ahead of his time," according to medical historian AP Naef. But in 1916, during an operation, his right hand was cut by a stray sliver of glass. It became seriously infected, and amputation was urged (but not undertaken). He lost all effective use of his right hand.

For a time, he ran a sanatorium in Wales, and worked on a book about thoracic surgery, and wrote journal articles. But in 1921 he returned to surgery, using his left hand. His sanatorium became a destination for thoracic surgical training, and Morriston Davies a respected expert on tuberculosis. During the second world war he ran a "chest unit," treating the military and civilian chest injuries. Even after his retirement at 80, he sought adaptive innovation: he set up a series of pullies to allow him to garden when his legs wouldn't carry him.

His obituary from the British Medical Journal is long and informative.

RIP: Paul Longmore (1946-2010)

"The truth is that the major obstacles we must overcome are pervasive social prejudice, systematic segregation, and institutionalized discrimination."

--Paul Longmore, "Why I Burned my Book"

Sad news today. Paul Longmore, professor of history and director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, has died suddenly. There will surely be many, many remembrances and obituaries; Stephen Drake's was the first I saw, at the Not Dead Yet blog. And Wesley J. Smith has something up (mostly the press release from Californians Against Assisted Suicide) at Secondhand Smoke.

Paul's facebook page is becoming an impromptu wall of condolences and memories. Here's what scattered items I'll add.

*When historians of disability submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the Garrett case in 2000, Paul was the one who invited the signatures of over 100 scholars, because he knew exactly who to tap.

*I've been co-editing H-Disability since it launched in March 2001. But I had nothing to do with its founding--that's credited to Paul Longmore and the summer institute where the idea was hatched, long before my involvement.

*I'm president of the Disability History Association right now--but in many ways, the organization exists and thrives because Paul Longmore was very, very persistent when he saw an opportunity to support scholarship on disability.

*And when Paul organized a conference for disability historians in summer 2008, you know it was seriously accessible, not only to the participants but to our families.

Paul Longmore was a historian, with a PhD in history from Claremont Graduate School. It was important to him to know what your degree was in, and he worried about non-historians doing disability history without proper training or rigor. Now, none of my degrees are in history, even if I do historical projects. So it was a real and happy surprise to get a brief email from Paul, one day in 2004, just saying "I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your essay in the volume edited by Noll and Trent. It's really good history. Thank you." I kept that email window open for a very long time on my desktop. Thank you, Paul.

CFP: Disability in America: Voices of a New Generation

Call for Proposals: Disability in America: Voices of a New Generation

Ari Ne’eman and Stacey Milbern, Co-Editors

Deadline: January 15, 2011

This year, the disability community is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), civil rights law that protects the rights of disabled people.
Growing up in a post-ADA America has meant that many of us have had access to more opportunities than previous generations. We know if we had been born in 1967 instead of 1987 our lives would look completely different. We know the history of our people is tainted by eugenics, ableism, lack of access and the sting of low expectations. We recognize the work that has been done by disability movements over the last century to make the current lives we live possible. We are proud to be members of this vibrant, breathing, community.

Although the struggle continues, we recognize that the realities of disabled people look vastly different in many ways. With this in mind, we are requesting proposals for chapters in a book-length anthology to document this legacy and record the stories of disabled young people
talking about what it is to grow up with a disability in this day and age.

Part One of our anthology will attempt to explore how a new generation experiences these age old challenges, affording a chance to assess how far we have really come. Part Two of our anthology asks disabled young people to identify what our struggle looks like now.

We’re seeking a diversity of perspectives and topics. A few questions we pose as food for thought:
What does it look like to navigate the medical system?
What is it like trying to find and keep a job as a young person with a disability today?
How are mental health challenges and psychiatric impairments approached by family members?
Do students still have to choose between support and inclusion?
What is the impact of pity and charity?
How do we survive the traumas we experience by people who say they are helping us, whether this is in schools, in doctor’s offices, our places of worship, or within our support systems?
How do people with less visible disabilities choose whether or not to disclose?
How has the nature of “passing” changed or not changed?
How do we fight eugenics, with its many faces?
How do we work with personal assistant services and our support systems?
How is disability portrayed differently in American society?
How are media, and pop culture representations of disability viewed by the new generation of young people with disabilities?
What do our relationships and sex lives look like?
How do we find community?

We are seeking creative non-fiction essays from young people with disabilities ages 13-30 (some flexibility will be available for compelling submissions from individuals slightly outside our preferred age range). People with all types of disabilities are welcome to submit. Speaking from personal experience is strongly encouraged. The intent of this project is to use personal voices to capture the experience of the new generation of young people with disabilities.

Submissions should range from 2,000 to 5,000 words. Please include your address, phone number, e-mail address and a short bio on the manuscript.

Proposals are due by e-mail to voicesoftheadageneration@gmail.com to January 15, 2011 but we encourage and will consider for approval early submissions. Please e-mail co-editors Stacey Milbern and Ari Ne’eman at voicesoftheadageneration@gmail.com with questions.

Disability Blog Carnival #68 is up NOW!

[visual description: photo used by RMJ in her edition of the Carnival; features a man making cotton candy; only his arms and torso are visible; a pinwheel and some heartshaped objects occupy the foreground]

RMJ at Deeply Problematic has just posted the July edition of the Disability Blog Carnival, with the theme "evidence." Go check it out for the usual remarkable range of voices and topics and tones--there really is something for everyone in the Carnival.

The next edition will be hosted at brilliantmindbrokenbody, with the invited theme of "distance." Here's the announcement. Submissions are due August 18th; you can leave a comment there or here, or if your post has the phrase "disability blog carnival" in it, I should be alerted about that too.

CFP: Disability & the Victorians

[From H-Disability and DS-Hum listservs.]

First Call for Papers:

Disability & the Victorians: Confronting Legacies

30th July-1st August 2012
Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, Leeds Trinity University College, UK

The nineteenth century was the period during which disability was conceptualised, categorised, and defined. The industrial evolution, advances in medicine, the emergence of philanthropy and the growth of asylums all played their part in creating what today's society describes as the medical model of disability.

Disability can be traced through many forms: in material culture and literary genres; scientific, medical and official inquiries; art; architecture; the history of disabled charities; disabled people's experiences; the legacy inherited by disabled people today of phrenology and physiognomy; events such as the 1880 Milan Conference, and the taxonomies and categories of disability - the handicapped; the deaf and dumb; the feeble minded; the blind; the imbecile and the cretin. The legacy of the relationship between the body, the scientific and the literary text; the intersection of disability, theories of evolution and anthropology, gender and degeneration. How can we draw disabled voices and testimonies together to construct 'the long view'? What are the advantages and the challenges of teaching about disability and the disabled in the Victorian period?

Proposals for papers, panels, posters and other forms of presentation (e.g. creative writing) are invited that open up new lines of research and inquiry relating to any aspect of Disability in the Victorian period. Possible themes might include:
* Resistance, conformity, subversion, transgression.
* Freak shows and circuses.
* The visibility and invisibility of disability: beggars, street sellers, hawkers; Victorian institutions, charities, asylums, schools and clubs.
* Taxonomic practices.
* Disabled heroes and villains; male vs. female invalidism; the school of pain.
* Victorian technologies, prostheses, the emergence of audiology, the development and spread of Braille.
* The revival of folkloric changelings.
* Portrayals of children and childhood.
* Disability as a moral force for improvement, theology and spiritual enlightenment/development.
* The formation of Victorian national identity and national efficiency, empire, 'race' and colonialism.
* Disability and the fear of loss, eugenics and degeneration.
* The medical and scientific text.
* Victorian social policy and legal frameworks.

Those with an involvement in disability, either through work, teaching or direct experience, and papers that adopt a comparative frame, shifting across the normal boundaries of history, literary studies, the history of medicine, the history and philosophy of science, art history, the history of childhood etc. are especially sought, but studies with a narrower focus seeking to challenge Victorian legacies in this field are also welcome.

The deadline for the submission of proposals for panel sessions (no longer than 500 words) and proposals for individual 20-minute papers and presentations (200-250 words) is October 4, 2010. At this stage your proposal/enquiry may be exploratory. A second and final call for papers will be issued in June 2011.

Please send a short biographical note together with your proposal. Prospective panel organisers should also send the panelists' names, paper titles, and a short biographical note for each panelist and their contact details.

Support workers and carers are exempted from the conference registration fees. Papers will be circulated in advance of the conference. Please indicate by July 2011 if you would like LCVS to supply a sign language interpreter. Please indicate by April 2012 if you would like LCVS to supply an escort or support worker. All assistance dogs are welcome. If you have any enquiries regarding facilities and services for disabled people, or would like this Call for Papers in large print, please contact Joy Hamblin.

Proposals, or enquiries relating to these, should be sent to Karen Sayer k.sayer@leedstrinity.ac.uk

General enquiries to:
Joy Hamblin, Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, Leeds Trinity University College, Brownberrie Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire, LS18 5HD, UK; email j.hamblin@leedstrinity.ac.uk; tel. +44 (0)113 2837305

CFP:International Interdisciplinary Conference “We and the others” XVII Semana de Ética y Filosofía Política. Donostia-San Sebastián; 1, 2,3 of June 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Interdisciplinary Conference “We and the others” XVII Semana de Ética y Filosofía Política. Donostia-San Sebastián (Spain); 1, 2,3 of June 2011

The Spanish Association of Political Philosophy &Ethics is celebrating its 38th meeting in Donostia-San Sebastián this coming June, 2011. Thought as a meeting point for academic philosophy, European and Latin-American universities, and the general public, it has covered topics from theoretical approaches to current problems concerning contemporary democracy: such as new political movements in neo-colonial states (specially Latin America) stressing identity concerns. This year topic is “We and the Others” and focuses on minority issues, with topics ranging from History of moral and politic ideas to political imaginary in contemporary latin America. This year edition include Disability as a main topic in the minority issues. We welcome papers in Spanish, English & Basque. Deadline for proposals ends October 10th, 2010. More about the Conference can be found at:http://17semana.wordpress.com/
Disability : La construcción del sujeto político en el colectivo de personas con discapacidad / Political Agency in the
Disability Rights Movement
Coordinator: Melania Moscoso (melania.moscoso@gmail.com)
Over the last two decades, the Disability Rights Movement has joined the public debate about Human Rights and minority
issues. Compulsory institutionalization and segregated education have prevented the full participation of people with disabilities in
the public arena. The politic and civic agency of the Disability Rights Movement, in its theoretical contributions and field experiences
to public life, will be discussed in this Round Table.

Melania Moscoso, Phd.
Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Spanish Research Council.
C/Albasanz, 26-28. Madrid 28037 (España)
Tlf: 0034916022499
E-mail: melania.moscoso@cchs.csic.es