Time Management: Is it even possible?

Image via WikipediaI'm not sure that it is.  So far, I've been looking over the books, and the articles are starting to pile up.  My biggest problem is that I keep reading the books after I've already found what I need for my project.  I'm learning a lot about "the life experiences of people with disabilities" and the obstacles they face, so that's good, but I know I'm burning up time like crazy.  I'm starting to wonder if this is an unconscious strategy to put off the real work I need to do before I can start writing, so I'm making a pact with myself:  start on the articles, or work on the proposal, or else . . . I can't think of a workable punishment. 

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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.

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Smacked with the Irony Stick

Image via WikipediaIt turns out that I shouldn't have been so excited on Tuesday -- the message on the school's webpage was a mistake, and they figured it out a few minutes after I saw it.  Luckily, Dr. Toffee is an insomniac, so she saw it, too, and there was no class.  Sadly, I didn't get nearly as much work done as I was hoping.  I'm supposed to do a QHQ this week, which is where you come up with a (an?) hypothesis to answer your research question, then see what question occurs to you after that.  Here goes:
Q:  Do the experiences of comic-book superheroes in movies parallel the experiences of people with disabilities? 
H:  I've found a lot of evidence in support of this in FF and X:TLS, but I'm not necessarily sure that this is part of every superhero film.  I'm starting to think that it depends on the publisher of the original comic book.  My two "object texts" are both based on Marvel comic books, and I think that this applies to other series that involve physical differences, like The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil (he's blind), and Iron Man.  But if you look at series from DC Comics, you won't find the same theme stressed in the same way.  Batman currently has emotional issues, but there's no cultural oppression involved. Superman?  He actually pretends to have a vision impairment to seem more "normal."  I think that the answer to my initial question is yes, if they are Marvel superheroes.  And, this does, in fact, lead me to another question.
Q:  Why is this theme (or maybe it's a plot and characterization device) so pervasive in Marvel comics?  

I think that the new question has a lot more depth.  And here's another irony:  just as I'm looking at the Human Torch as an example of someone who doesn't buy into the cultural model of disability, he has died in the comic books.   It made the New York Times! (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/fantastic-four-no-more/).

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So Here's my Question

Image via WikipediaI was so excited, I forgot what I was supposed to be doing.
My research question, for right now at least, is:  do the experiences of comic-book superheroes in movies parallel the experiences of people with disabilities?  The two movies I thought of, The Fantastic Four and X-Men:  The Last Stand, seem to do this, as far as I remember, but I'll have to watch them again to be sure.  And then I'll have to start researching disability as an experience.  I think I'll watch them today, since I've got the day off (yay again!) and I don't want to go out in the snow

Hey, It's a Snow Day!

Image by bella lago via FlickrI just woke up and decided to post my entry about my research question, but I thought I would check to see if the campus was going to close early today (blizzard warning for later this afternoon!).  I was sure that my class (12:30 to 1:45PM) wouldn't be cancelled, since I never get that lucky, but there's a big flashing message on the school webpage, and it looks like they decided to close for the day.  I'm so excited -- it's only the third week of the semester, and I already needed an extra day to catch up.  Yay!  I'm going to make some coffee and get right to work.

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