How Am I Doing?

Grade cutoffs (Photo credit: ragesoss)

I'm working on my final project for the course, a self-evaluation essay that goes with a portfolio.  And, I'm having a few problems.  I spent a lot of time over the past 7 weeks researching disability studies issues and watching Avatar (I must have seen the entire film 7 times and the scenes I used for the paper at least 30 times), which I remember doing, but the actual writing is kind of a blur.  So, I re-read what I wrote, and I'm kind of mortified by my first paper (a scene analysis with a DS approach, no outside research).  It looks like a sixth-grader wrote it.  On the other hand, I am now totally impressed by my research paper.  I gotta wonder, does everybody else in the class feel this way?

I won't know the grade until Monday, but I think that my improvement since early June has to count for something. 

Related articles

• Book reviews: The Faces of Intellectual Disability (iupress.typepad.com)
• Majority world disability & econonics & minority world decisions (enablingoccupationaltherapy.wordpress.com)
• Towards a Contextual Psychology of Disablism (psypress.com)
• Study: Disabled Kids Face More Abuse, Violence (boiseweekly.com)
• The Devastation of Darkness: Disability in Exodus 10:21-23, 27 And Intensification in the Plagues (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Inclusion (enablingoccupationaltherapy.wordpress.com)
• Computers Grade Essays Fast ... But Not Always Well (npr.org)
• Essay-Grading Software, as Teacher's Aide (educationviews.org)
• Taming the Paper Beast: Time Saving Techniques for Essay Grading (robinbneal.com)

Is there a draft in here? (revising my research paper)

I had my conference with Dr. Toffee yesterday, and it was an eye-opener.  I was amazed at how many things I didn't notice were wrong with my draft (on one page I even misspelled Avatar!).  I knew that I had a problem with organization, and she showed me how to fix that (define terms one by one in the lit survey section of the paper, then keep all the analysis divided into the three scenes I'm looking at).  Now it seems obvious, and I can't believe I didn't figure that out for myself.  I have to drive out to NIU in Dekalb tomorrow to use their library.  Ours doesn't have the 2 books I need to quote from (I returned the copies I got through interlibrary loan already.  I was sure I was finished with them).

Anyway, I have until 8AM Monday to finish the revision, and I plan to rewatch the entire movie (during breaks from revising, so it'll probably take all weekend) before then.  I want to come up with a brilliant conclusion about what Avatar is saying about disability and the disabled.

Related articles

• Do We Always Revert to What we Learned First? (abirdseyeviewblog.wordpress.com)
• Avatar-Themed Nightclubs - The 'Avastar' Night Club Brings James Cameron's Creations to Life (TrendHunter.com) (trendhunter.com)
• Writer's Memo (Reflection for the Intro Revision) (eng3010paszeksummer12.wordpress.com)

Avatar, Exoskeletons, and the Disabled

from Eksobionics

The more I watch Avatar this way (I mean thinking about disability), the more I am amazed at how many things I didn't notice when I first saw it.  One of those things is that exoskeleton thing, which I have now learned is called an AMP suit.  I was watching that scene with Jake meeting Quaritch again, and it suddenly hit me that here's Jake in a beat-up, stripped-down wheelchair, while able-bodied Quaritch is in the suit, a machine that effectively makes him super-able-bodied.  And I thought, why isn't Jake in a suit of some kind?  If they have these AMP suits on Pandora, they should have a version for paraplegics available on Earth, shouldn't they?  Well, guess what -- they do.  For real, and right now, although they are horribly expensive.  The filmmakers would probably say that Jake can't have one for the same reason he can't have corrective surgery, which is that the VA won't pay for it, but hey, it's the future, and by then the cost should have come down, right?  He could maybe have a stripped-down, beat-up, secondhand one, couldn't he?

Well, my main point is that even though I didn't know these things already exist, plenty of other people who did were probably asking themselves the same question.  Incidentally, there are a lot of YouTube videos of the things.

Related articles

• A wearable robot helps disabled people walk - The Hindu (thehindu.com)
• ReWalk Exo-skeleton gets paraplegics walking again (slashgear.com)
• Exoskeleton suit helps paraplegics to walk (lostateminor.com)
• Exoskeletons await in work/care closet (japantimes.co.jp)

Just one of the guys



Avatar (2009 film)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I've been looking for a scene in Avatar that shows a contrast to Quaritch's ableism, and I think I've found one that will work okay.  It's the landing scene.  First we see all the new soldiers exiting the shuttle, and as they walk past a group of soldiers who are working nearby, they are greeted with comments like "New meat!"  Jake rolls down the ramp and finds himself on a collision course with a guy in one of those exoskeletons, and it becomes clear that Jake is going to have to evade, not exo-guy.  There's two ways to look at this:  maybe exo-guy can't maneuver very fast, in which case, he's okay on the disability front, OR, he could, but he's forcing Jake to do so because he's another ableist jerk like Quaritch (and not a contrast).  However, he says something like "watch it, hot rod," which actually has a kind of accepting tone.  The next line comes from a guy next to the one who said "new meat."  He turns to NM-guy, and tells him to look (pointing at Jake).  NM-guy asks, "meals on wheels?"  Both this comment and the hot-rod line are the kind of things that men say to each other all the time as part of some weird ritual that I don't understand, but I think it means that they are, somehow, welcoming him just as they did the other soldiers.  I'm probably going to have to do some more research, since I'm pretty sure that some sociologist has come up with a name for this process.  Back to the library, or at least to its website.

Related articles

• Wearable Exoskeleton Can Help Users Carry Heavy Items With Ease (InnovationToronto.com)
• AMP Suit (the Avatar exoskeleton thing) with video

Ignore my Disability, Please

English: Rocks in mountains. Deutsch: Felsen im Huangshan-Gebirge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Nondisabled people have the right to choose when to be able-bodied. Disabled people must try to be as able-bodied as possible all the time," which Tobin Siebers lists as a myth in American culture about disability, means that social pressure exists on the disabled to keep able-bodied people from noticing their disabilities.  In other words, overdoing things that are difficult is required of the disabled so that people without disabilities don't get uncomfortable.  Where I see this in Avatar is in the scene I was talking about before.  When Quaritch gets into the big exoskeleton thing, Jake has to be elevated so that they're on the same eye level, when it would have made more sense (and been more polite, too) if Quaritch had continued to sit on the weight bench while they were talking.  Moreover, there is no kind of railing on the raised platform, which would be kind of scary even for people who aren't using a wheelchair.  So Jake has this added burden, and you can imagine where in some cases, trying to act like he is able bodied would be bad for his health, maybe even dangerous.  

Related articles

• 200% on a ticket for a disabled fan? Go to Hull (thesun.co.uk)
• How Hollywood Casts The Handicapped (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Don't Disable Your Site for Handicapped Users (firstrate.co.nz)
• Justice for the Sick and Disabled (believersbrain.com)

The Ideology of Ability

DISABLED MUST PAY (Photo credit: Darren Cullen)

One of the sources that I'm going to use for my paper is Disability Theory, by Tobin Siebers.  His ideas are really interesting, and I got a ton of material out of the book, especially from the part about the ideology of ability, which he says is “at its simplest the preference for able-bodiedness.  At its most radical, it . . . set[s] the measure of body and mind that gives or denies human status to individual persons” (8).  Pretty tough, huh?  I never thought about this before, but I know I've seen people act like a disabled person wasn't human (the worst time -- it's a long story -- was when I saw a man get really disgusted when he saw a woman in a wheelchair.  I couldn't believe it).  Anyway, Siebers has a list of what he calls “ideas, narratives, myths, and stereotypes” (9) that are current in our culture, and some of them really fit how Quaritch treats Jake in the movie.  The two that struck me the hardest are "Nondisabled people have the right to choose when to be able-bodied.  Disabled people must try to be as able-bodied as possible all the time," and "It is better to be dead than disabled."  He's right, and I'll talk more about it in my next post. 

Related articles

• Removing barriers for the disabled (mysanantonio.com)
• Not Fitting Into the Norm of Society (missyhood.wordpress.com)
• Steampunk Prosthetics: Rebuilding Our Humanity (Xerposa) (josephrobertlewis.wordpress.com)
• Disability and the return of blame culture (newstatesman.com)
• Presenting a methodologically orientated conference paper with a few panic induced endorphins (eljeejavier.com)

What is Disability Studies?

English: A collection of pictograms. Three of them used by the United States National Park Service. A package containing those three and all NPS symbols is available at the Open Icon Library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From what the Critical Model Packet says,  disability studies is nothing like what I thought it was when I saw the words on the assignment page.  According to the packet, disability studies uses what's called "the social model,  which looks at how a culture constructs the identity of persons with disabilities."  What I'm getting from this is that I'm supposed to be looking at my film (Avatar) to see how Jake is affected by other people's ideas -- and his own, too, I guess -- about people with disabilities.  For example, when he gets to Pandora, the people on the ship seem to be ignoring him completely and he has some problems getting his stuff together before he can exit, but when he leaves the ship, the guys in the landing area pick on him just as they pick on everyone else.  So, it seems to me that the people on the ship, the ones who made the ship, and the people in charge are basically discriminating against him, while the soldiers outside are not.  

Related articles

• Seen and Heard!

  ---

• What sex education is available for young people with a learning disability?

  ---

• CRTC studying telecom technology for people with disabilities

  ---

• No place for disablism in disability campaigning

  ---

• National Disability Rights Group: Study Finds Medical System Violates Civil Rights of Disabled People

  ---

• #6 'The Anti-Social Model of Disability' by Dewsbury et al.

  ---

• A Primer on Fatphobia, Body Image, and Disability

  ---

My topic choice



Avatar (2009 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(I wrote my first few entries in my geology notebook, and I haven't had time to post them until now, so this one is from last Monday)

After staring at the list of films for the research project for the last hour, I finally settled on Avatar, and I'm going to use disability studies as my approach.  On the list, Avatar is in the myth criticism category, not disability, but it says it's okay to use a different approach for any of the movies, and besides, what I read on the myth sheet in our packet made me think of disability.  I mean, the hero of the film uses a wheelchair, and some of the people that he meets treat him differently than they would treat a person without a disability, so this looks like a good choice.

Related articles

• Myths surrounding Disability.

  ---

• The Three Principles of Disability Etiquette

  ---

• Russian Researchers want to Replace Your Physical Body with a Holographic Avatar

  ---

What's my thesis?

Image via WikipediaHere it is, at least the one I'm working with for my draft:
The presentation of physical difference in comic-book superhero films closely parallels the lived experiences of people with disabilities.
I'd like to make it harder-edged, but I'm starting my draft today, and I think this will work.  Dr. Toffee says that we don't need to do an outline unless that's the way we work best, but she also says that we should try to break down our draft into sections and start wherever we think we have the most stuff ready to go.  For me, I guess, that would be the section where I go over the disability studies sources (she calls this "a lit survey").
So, in this section, I need to explain the d/s perspective and what they call the "social model" of disability, which has to do with identity and how the way people with physical and mental differences are seen by the larger, non-disabled population.  Since almost everything man-made is designed for a pretty narrow range of people's sizes, shapes, and abilities, the disabled have to deal with obstacles that their surroundings present.  There is also a cultural model, which is very similar, and I'm not sure yet which one is better for my project.  I have a lot more sources on the social model, and that may be the deciding factor.
Incidentally, the superhero picture at the top of this post is ironic, in case you were wondering-- it reminded me of a tee shirt I saw on a website that sells disability-themed message shirts.

Related articles

• Seattle right to test four-hour limit for disabled parking (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Disability Rights California Hot Topics and News for 03/15/2011 (fyrtshare.wordpress.com)
• Persons with disability stage protest (hindu.com)
• I love being busy again (musingsofacollegegrad.org)

A Couple More Books

I meant to post this last week, but I got caught up in some other stuff.  Here are the other possible sources I found:

Snyder, Sharon L., Brueggemann, Brenda Jo, and Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, eds.  Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York:  MLA, 2002.  This is another book of articles, and I can already tell that a couple will be good for me.

Siebers, Tobin.  Disability Theory.  Ann Arbor:  U of Michigan P, 2008.  Dr. Toffee told me to look in this book for stuff on "The Ideology of Ability," which she thinks will apply.

That's all for now.   

Related articles

• "What people living with disability can teach us--Susannah Fox" and related posts (e-patients.net)
• What People Living With Disability Can Teach Us (thehealthcareblog.com)
• The 'inexplicable' rise in Disability Living Allowance explained (leftfootforward.org)
• http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/tough-job-of-getting-disabled-veterans-back-to-work/19841254/?icid=zemanta (dailyfinance.com)

A Whole Lotta Books

Cover via AmazonIt's week 4 of the semester, and the prompt for this week says to discuss the books we've found so far (since the school library is pretty small, we'll probably have to do interlibrary loans, so we have to start looking right away).  As I mentioned before, Dr. Toffee gave me some titles and authors to look for, so I'll start with them.

Davis, Lennard, ed.  The Disability Studies Reader.  NY:  Routledge, 1997.  There's a newer edition of this, but this is the one our library has, so I checked it out.  It's a collection of articles, and a bunch of them look good for my project.  Toffee says that the basics for analysis are in most of the articles.

Linton, Simi.  Claiming Disability:  Knowledge and Identity.  NY:  NYUP, 1998.  I read the first chapter in this one (it's a short book), and it looks like I'm going to be using it a lot -- it's just what I need.  She talks about how disabled people have been treated through history and now, too.

Thomson, Rosemarie Garland.  Extraordinary Bodies:  Figuring  Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature.  NY: Columbia UP, 1996.   I had to do an interlibrary loan on this, so I haven't seen it yet, but the title sounds like it is relevant.  After all, there isn't a much more extraordinary body than the Thing, right?  She also has a book on freak shows, which looks pretty interesting.

There's more, but I'll save that for next time.

Related articles

• When the disabled were segregated (newstatesman.com)
• Disabled less likely to use web: study (cbc.ca)
• Income at Risk: Job Recovery Still Lagging for Those with Disabilities, Reports Allsup (prweb.com)
• How to Succeed At College With a Disability (distance-education.org)

Difference in the Movies

Image by WBUR via FlickrI think I've got a topic, but I have to come up with a research question, and I'm having trouble finding the words.  I saw Dr. Toffee during her office hours on Thursday, and we talked about movies.  It turns out that she is interested in disability in movies.  After hearing her talk about it for a while, I got interested too, and she suggested a few that I might want to think about.  This may sound strange, but I think I'm going to look at superhero movies, starting with The Fantastic Four and the X-Men films.  They both deal with people who are physically different from "normal" people, and I can already see that they have some of the issues Dr. Toffee mentioned.
My research is not going to be about the films as much as it is going to be about what they call "disability studies," which is the academic field that covers this kind of thing.  She gave me a couple of book titles to look for, so I've got a start for that.

Related articles

• Superheroes, No Longer The Stuff of Fiction! (socyberty.com)
• Superhero Movies By The Numbers, An Infographic (cinemablend.com)
• Will 2011 be the year that superheroes break out of their same old formula? [2011 Preview] (io9.com)