Just catalogued: Hall Carpenter Archive at LSE

Out of the Box, the blog for the London School of Economics Archives, announced recently that they've completed further cataloguing in the Hall Carpenter Archives, a collection of materials related to the history of gay activism in Britain. Among the items of ephemera they chose to highlight the holdings is this cover from the Winter 1983 issue of the Gay Men's Disabled Group newsletter:


Looks like they have eight consecutive issues of this newsletter, from 1982-1985, available at LSE Archives, if you're looking for a primary source to spur or enhance a disability history project. Community materials like this are often a goldmine, and also too often lost ("it's just a newsletter").

January 10: Johnnie Ray (1927-1990)

[visual description: Singer Johnnie Ray in front of a large microphone with the words "Columbia Records" on it; Ray has his eyes closed, his mouth open, and his hands on his head, in a pose that seems meant to convey absorption in his singing.]

Born on this date in 1927 was John Alvin "Johnnie" Ray, an American singer popular in the 1950s. Ray was born and raised in Oregon. As a boy, Ray was participating in a "blanket toss" activity at a Boy Scout Jamboree when his right eardrum was damaged and he became deaf on that side. He lost more hearing during a surgery in 1958. (Some biographies say that Ray had some hearing loss before the jamboree event, as well.)

Ray performed wearing a visible hearing aid (check out this video for example, which begins with Ray facing away from the camera, with the back of his right ear in the spotlight); it can be seen in some publicity stills, but in others it is not included. Road manager Tad Mann attributed the singer's distinctive sound and highly animated performance style to his concern for pronouncing words clearly and communicating through facial expressions and body language.

While Ray was "out" about being a deaf man, he struggled in an era when homosexuality was criminalized. He was arrested, tried, and fined several times in the 1950s for minor incidents related to his sexuality. He experienced alcoholism and drug addiction for decades, and died from liver failure in 1990.

Further reading:

Cheryl Herr, "Roll-over-Beethoven: Johnnie Ray in Context," Popular Music 28(3)(2009): 323-340.

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

News of the Day: Amazonfail and BADD 2009

Does the "Amazonfail" story affect disability studies books too? Oh yes it does!

Will there be a Blogging Against Disablism Day 2009? Oh yes there will!

Disability in other campaigns this year, part 2

Because disabled people (like Itzhak Perlman) don't just have opinions about healthcare and disability rights, but about the whole range of issues in play this election year:

Video: "Coming Out"

This isn't brand new (it was on the festival circuit in 2007, and first televised in January 2008), but I just learned of it (at the Berks, thanks Susan). And Jana has requested "things to make me laugh," so here's "Coming Out," an award-winning short film from BBC2's See Hear, written by Charlie Swinbourne and directed by Louis Neethling. David Hay and Debbie Norman are playing the son and mother.



Visuals described: A nice suburban kitchen, mother cooking tea, toast, frying something for breakfast. Twenty-something son comes into the kitchen. He signs his lines; all the dialog is subtitled:

Mum!
What darling?
I've got something to tell you.
All right dear, just a minute.
I've been wanting to tell you something for a some time now....
This sounds serious.
It is serious!
Are you ill?
No, it's nothing like that.
It's about me. Who I am.
What do you mean?
The thing is that I...I'm different to other people.
Oh, I know that, you're my special boy! Always have been.
No, I mean really different. I've know for sometime now, but... I'm deaf.
No you're not, just don't concentrate enough, always away with the fairies in your own little world...

[I'm not sure about the legalities of typing out the whole six-minute script--I wish there was a transcript somewhere online already! Ideas?]

Charlie Swinbourne's "Four Deaf Yorkshiremen" is also on YouTube. (This one has no audio at all, all subtitles.) Fookem and Bug has an interview with Swinbourne.

Temple U. Fall '08 Disability Studies

I want to draw to your attention two graduate courses that are going to be offered at Temple University, Philadelphia, in Fall 2008

Mike Dorn [email] will be the lead faculty for the new course Disability Studies 5405: Disability Studies in the Humanities [PDF]. Drawing on the rich oral history, media, literary, and archival resources available in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, this class will help students to explore a variety of historical and contemporary sites. Trained as a cultural geographer, Dr. Dorn’s own research focuses on historical patterns of oppression and liberation as well as the role that disability ascriptions play in the bounding of the ‘normal.’ Although he draws on international intellectual currents and aesthetics, Mike is particularly interested in their cultural expression in the MidAtlantic and the Midwest.
Fall 2008, Monday evenings, from 5:00 to 7:30 pm

Disability Studies 5401: Disability Rights and Culture will be taught by my colleague, disability scholar and activist Carol Marfisi [email]. Drawing on her background in psychology, Carol explores the phenomenological experience of disability and for the historical formation of movements for disability rights. Course topics include eugenics, the parents movement, the developmental disability and independent living movements, assistive technology, sexuality and relationships, and disability culture.
Fall 2008, Thursday evenings, from 5:00 to 7:30 pm

Whichever course one takes, students leave better equipped to act thoughtfully and effectively in the present, to fight for change in their families, communities and societies. Don't hesitate to call or email if you would like to receive more information on these classes and how to enroll.

Intersections

Blue at Gimp Parade has a really good post up this morning about the complicated murder trial of Daphne Wright, a "deaf, black lesbian" whose access to a fair trial in South Dakota has been questioned. For a broader historical discussion of the idea that a "whirlwind of lesbian drama" can drive someone to murder, check out Christine Coffman's new book, Insane Passions: Lesbianism and Psychosis in Literature and Film (Wesleyan University Press 2006--the book's cover is shown at right, a black-and-white image of two young white women embracing). Coffman traces the cultural roots and expressions of the stereotype of the "insane lesbian" across the 20th century, from a murder trial in 1930s France, through film and literature.

And while I'm on the subject of intersections between criminology, GLBTQ history and disability history in the 20th century, I read an old friend's new book recently, Jackie Blount's Fit to Teach: Same-Sex Desire, Gender, and School Work in the Twentieth Century (SUNY Press 2005), in which she follows the struggle of gay and lesbian teachers against widespread employment discrimination in the US. One story (p. 113) is from the world of Deaf education in 1970:

Only a year after the Stonewall riot, a counselor at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford lost his job immediately after he discussed gay rights on television. The young man, who had served as an officer of the Kalos Society: Gay Liberation, Hartford, had agreed to participate in a televised panel discussion on gay liberation and society. He would attempt to fight his dismissal. However, around this time, the Journal of the American Bar Association released poll results indicated that respondents 'considered homosexuality a crime second only to murder or to murder or to murder and armed robberty.' Despide this considerable public hostility, other educators besides the West Hartford counselor would begin standing up as well, even if termination were inevitable.

California textbook bill already includes disability

Last Thursday, California state senator Sheila Kuehl was interviewed on the radio (the audio is here) about SB1437, "School Instruction: Prohibition of Discriminatory Content," a controversial state bill that would add "sexual orientation" to the list of identity categories to be presented without discrimination in school textbooks. The revised language would read:

No textbook or other instructional materials shall be adopted by the state board or by any governing board for use in the public schools that contains any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of their race or ethnicity, gender, disability, nationality, sexual orientation, or religion.

Kuehl (once known for her portrayal of Zelda Gilroy on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis") was one of the first women admitted to Harvard Law School, and is the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to the California legislature. She notes that if textbooks are "silent about the diversity of talented people who were important in California, the impression is that only white, straight men did anything important. That leaves virtually everyone else in school believing their talents may not be sufficient."

Maybe make that white, straight, able men? The disability clause is already part of the current law, and has been since 1987. Has it been enforced? I'm curious if it's ever had an impact. Under the new version (if passed), will California high school students in American history courses get to know that (for example) Hull House founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams (left, 1860-1935) was both lesbian and disabled (from spinal tuberculosis as a young child), and maybe talk about what it meant that she often had to conceal both these central elements of her life? How both might have shaped her work?

Cool.