The Scope of Eugenics: Call for Submissions

Eugenics Archives (eugenicsarchive.ca) is pleased to announce a four-day workshop at the Banff Centre, May 22nd-25th, 2015, in Banff, Alberta. To acknowledge the significant contributions made by students to the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project over the past four years, we invite submissions from early career scholars—students and those within three years of completing their doctorates—from any discipline on topics related to eugenics and its contemporary significance.

Submissions should consist of a single document that includes a (i) summary abstract (<150 words), (ii) longer description (<750 words) outlining the presentation and explaining the relevance of the topic to eugenics, (iii) short biographical statement (<100 words), and (iv) CV. Possible topics include, but are in no way restricted to, the following :

Apologies to eugenics survivors / Child welfare /
Collective memory / Human diversity /
Nationalism / Quality of life /
Queer sexuality / Roma peoples /
Schizophrenia / World Health Organization /
Whiteness / Particular Countries / Geographic Regions

The project director is happy to provide feedback to potential participants on these and other suggestions (e.g., on particular countries or regions of the world). Participants are expected to attend the whole workshop and to contribute a short article to eugenicsarchive.ca, ideally based on their presentation, within one month of the workshop. Articles accessible via the Encyc or Around the World modules at the site indicate the type of article we have in mind.

Accommodation and meals for all workshop participants will be covered by Eugenics Archives. Participants will also be notified upon acceptance if we are able to cover in full, or contribute to in part, additional travel expenses. The workshop will allow for substantial opportunities to enjoy the Banff surrounds and will encourage networking, mentoring, and informal discussion between junior scholars interested in eugenics and Eugenics Archives team members.

Deadline for submissions : February 15th, 2015 Acceptances : March 15th, 2015

Questions and submissions to the project director, Professor Rob Wilson : scopeofeugenics@gmail.com

Alberta Eugenics Awareness Week (AEAW) 2013 ~ Oct 16 – Oct 22, 2013

Please join us in Edmonton at the University of Alberta for a series of events throughout Wednesday October 16 to Tuesday October 22, 2013 that mark:

Alberta Eugenics Awareness Week (AEAW) 2013 ~ Oct 16 – Oct 22, 2013

Wednesday Oct 16 – Rob Wilson, University of Alberta, Standpoint Eugenics.  Brown-bag lunch co-sponsored with the Dept. of Educational Policy Studies.  Noon-1:30pm, 7-102 Education North.

Thursday Oct 17 – Eugenics and Indigenous Perspectives.  Discussion panel co-sponsored with the Faculty of Native Studies.  Panelists: Tracy Bear, Joanne Faulkner, Jerry Kachur, Noon-1:00pm, 2-06 Pembina Hall.

Friday Oct 18 – 1) Persons’ Day Panel: Feminism, Motherhood and Eugenics: Historical Perspectives. Panelists: Wendy Kline, University of Cincinnati, Erika Dyck, University of Saskatchewan, and Molly Ladd-Taylor, York University. Noon – 1:00 pm, Henderson Hall, Rutherford South. Wheelchair accessible. 2) Wendy Kline, University of Cincinnati, “The Little Manual that Started a Revolution: How Midwifery Became a Hippie Practice”, 3:30 – 5.00pm, Assiniboia 2-02A, co-sponsored with the Departments of History and Classics, and Women’s and Gender Studies. 3) FIXED: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement. A documentary by Regan Brashear www.fixedthemovie.com, co-sponsored with the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine and the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre. Telus Centre 150.  Doors at 6:30 pm, film at 7:00 pm. Q&A with Dr. Gregor Wolbring (who is featured in the film) following the film. Wheelchair accessible and closed captioned.

Saturday Oct 19 – Team Meeting, Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada.  2-02A Assiniboia Hall (9:00 am – 4:30 pm) Lunch provided; please RSVP to moyra@ualberta.ca by Noon Oct 16^th.

Monday Oct 21 – 1) Joanne Faulkner, University of New South Wales, The Politics of Childhood and Community Identity.  Noon – 1:00 pm in 7-152 Education North.  Co-sponsored by the Departments of Educational Policy Studies and Human Ecology.  2) World Premiere “Surviving Eugenics in the 21st Century: Our Stories Told” 7:00 pm – 9:15 pm Metro Cinema at the Garneau, 8712 – 109 Street NW, Edmonton. Trailer: http://youtu.be/QoM12GAJm8I; closed captioned and ASL interpretation; wheelchair access through the alley entrance.  Please sign up in advance at Facebook to help us with numbers!

Tuesday Oct 22 – 1) Joanne Faulkner, University of New South Wales, The Coming Postcolonial Community: Political Ontology of Aboriginal Childhood in Bringing Them Home.  4.00 – 5.30pm in Assiniboia 2-02a.  Co-sponsored with the Departments of Philosophy and Sociology.  2) Difference and Diversity: An Evening of Performances.  Featuring CRIPSiE (formerly iDance), a reading by Leilani Muir, the art work of Nick Supina III, and much more.  Education North 4-104. Doors at 6:30 pm, performances at 7:00 pm.  Please sign up in advance via Facebook to help us with numbers!

ASL Interpretation can be arranged for events, please contact moyra@ualberta.ca prior to the event.

All Events are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!

All events are at the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

Difference & Diversity: An Evening of Performances

As part of Alberta Eugenics Awareness Week (AEAW), Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada invites you to an evening of performances celebrating difference and diversity in multiple forms.

Performances will include:
Musical Guests
CRIPSiE (formerly iDance)
Art work by Nick Supina III
Leilani Muir reading from her autobiography
A surprise performance by a member of the Living Archives Team
And others!

Date: Oct 22, 2013
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm
Performance at 7pm
Location: Arts Based Research Studio, Education North (4-104),
University of Alberta

Free admission
Free snacks and refreshments
Wheel chair accessible
ASL interpretation available upon advance request

For more information or to request ASL interpretation, please email: emkenned@ualberta.ca
Sponsored by the Living Archives of Eugenics in Western Canada: http://www.eugenicsarchive.ca

If you are on facebook you can invite your friends and RSVP to this event here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/739781219380827/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

 

Sesame Street Reaches Middle Age

As someone as interested as much in the sorts of people we as a society think valuable as in the processes that we use to produce more of those we value, and fewer of those we don’t, I was was struck by a brilliant post last week at Like a Whisper on a topic that might not be suspected of raising deep points about both these values and how we shape people to realize them: Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary. Like many people born in the past 50 or so years, I grew up on a steady diet of Sesame Street, initially in black and white in the back streets of Broken Hill, and later in full colour in the beach-laden northern suburbs of Perth.

I remember, quite vividly still, a particular episode that has made its way into family lore. My parents had decided that they needed to make a break from a gritty mining town in the outback of Western New South Wales for somewhere that at least had grass (really), or even water in visible supply, and took me on a trip with them east, touring through the eastern part of the state, through Tamworth (my first sight of real greenery), Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour, and all the way up to Lismore, before torrential rainfall ended any more northerly ventures. While in Coffs Harbour, Sesame Street was doing its usual share of child-minding while my folks got on with other things. We were in some very cheap motel that included a coin-fed television, what we might think of as the early version of pay tv.

The Encyclopedia of American Disability History

The new  1264-page Encyclopedia of American Disability History now appears to be shipping. Susan Burch is the editor of this massive, three volume Tome that retails for $295 (US) from Facts on File.  Burch is well known for her work in deafness, such as Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II as well as her work more generally in the history of disability. Paul Longmore has also contributed a foreword to the book, and there is a very long list of contributors. Even I got to write a few entries,  including biographical pieces on two of my favorite people Barabara Waxman-Fiduccia and Dale Evans Rogers.

We Want To Read

Read and sign the petition here

The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, protested the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m. The coalition includes the organizations that represent the blind, people with dyslexia, people with learning or processing issues, seniors losing vision, people with spinal cord injuries, people recovering from strokes, and many others for whom the addition of text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 promised for the first time easy, mainstream access to over 245,000 books.

Medical “Ethics”?

I have to share the following true story.

Not too long ago, I attended a talk on medical ethics. The speaker was presenting a number of test cases for discussion. One of the test cases imagined a 32-year-old woman who had an accident that left her with quadriplegia and requiring ventilator assistance. 10 weeks after her injury, she asks her doctor to disconnect the ventilator. The speaker argued that the doctor should respect the patient’s right to self-determination and disconnect the ventilator. There was no subtlety expressed by the speaker about whether 10 weeks was long enough for the person to know what her life could be like after disability. There was no awareness expressed about objections to these sorts of right-to-die cases that have been expressed in the disability literature. There seemed to be no awareness about worries that have been discussed in medical ethics since at least the 1980’s that people who become dependent after such accidents may express a wish to die as a response to concerns about being a “burden,” and to the larger society’s implications that it wishes to be “rid” of such “burdens.” In other words, whose desires are people in such situations who say they wish to die really carrying out: their own “autonomous” desires, or the larger society’s desires to be “rid” of them? Such questions should give us pause as to whether people in such circumstances are really making autonomous decisions and engaging in self-determination when they ask people to help them die.

In a discussion afterword that was somewhat critical of the speaker’s position,

“Deaf people and Human Rights”

“Deaf people and Human Rights”
Comprehensive report on the situation of Deaf people released by the
World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and Swedish National Association of
the Deaf (SDR). The surveys are online
see here for the surveys

The report will be online soon also but if someone wants it now I can send it to the people interested. Just email me gwolbrin [at] ucalgary.ca

Society for Disability Studies (SDS) Annual Convention 2009: Call for Proposals

NOTE FROM ST: If you are organizing a conference and wish to make it inclusive of, and accessible to, a diverse range of disabled people, you should take some cues from the requirements for accessible presentations which are provided in this CFP following the description of themes for this conference. Notice, for instance, that the accessibility provisions are made explicit in the CFP itself.  Thus, disabled individuals who wish to submit a paper and/or attend the conference are not required to contact the conference organizers themselves in order to inquire about the accessibility of the event, nor are they left to guess, hope, or take their chances in regard to its accessibility.

THEME:  “IT’S ‘OUR’ TIME:  PATHWAYS TO AND FROM
DISABILITY STUDIES—PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE”

The Society for Disability Studies is pleased to announce a call for proposals for its annual convention, to be held June 17-20, 2009, in Tucson, Arizona, at the Hilton El Conquistador Resort.  The theme for this convention is “It’s ‘Our’ Time: Pathways to and From Disability Studies—Past, Present, Future.”  Time, in all its forms, conceptualizations, and manifestations, will be the central focus of the conference, though proposals on any topic relevant to Disability Studies are welcomed.  We imagine a number of different ways of approaching the issue of time, a concept critical to all aspects of disability experience and culture:

Forum on Linguistic Human Rights and the Future of Sign Languages

A one-day forum hosted by the Office of the Provost and the Department of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies.  The Office of the Provost and the Department of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies are sponsoring a one-day forum on Linguistic Human Rights and the Future of Sign Languages. This event will bring together leading scholars to discuss critical issues facing the future vitality of sign languages and linguistic diversity. The event is free and open to the entire university community. 

Where: Sorenson Language and Communication Center (SLCC) atrium, Gallaudet University

When: Friday, October 24, 2008, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

For the schedule of events and a list of guest speakers, go here:

http://deafstudies.gallaudet.edu/American_Sign_Language_and_Deaf_Studies/Forum_on_Linguistic_Human

_Rights_and_the_Future_of_Sign_Languages.html

Thanks to Dirksen Bauman for drawing the attention of the disability studies community to this important forum at Gallaudet.

UD, Gallaudet, and a new aesthetic (acknowledgements to H-Dirksen Bauman)

PLEASE NOTE: The link in this post has been corrected.

The principles of Universal Design (UD) emerged from the disabled people’s/disability rights movement at least as early as the late 1960s.  Initially, UD (or barrier-free design) was directed in large part to the development of architectural and infrastructural modifications such as curb-cuts which allow wheelchair users access to city streets, auditory beeping devices at traffic lights to inform blind pedestrians that lights have changed, and so on.  In order to counter facile cost-benefit analyses aimed at undermining such measures, disability activists and theorists have long argued that UD improves the lives of all sorts of people, not just disabled constituents: for instance, parents pushing strollers or pedestrians carrying groceries benefit from curb-cuts and ramps ostensibly designed for wheelchair users.  At one time directed toward reconfiguring the “built environment,” the principles of UD now underpin modifications in the design of ATMs, household appliances such as microwaves, computer software, and picture telephones so that universal access will one day be realized and not remain a mere slogan.

A “new aesthetic” of UD has been unfolding at Gallaudet University.  The refurbishing of Gallaudet is not only aimed at improving human interface with the physical, or “built” environment.  On the contrary, the new Gallaudet will be designed to accommodate a widening sense of deaf identity and the meaning of deafness.  An article which appeared on the front page of the Washington Post describes some of these changes.  Here is an excerpt:

 “Sidewalks wide enough to accommodate pedestrians using sign language. Rounded corners and strategically placed reflective glass so people who cannot hear can see who’s coming and who’s behind them. Glass elevators so passengers can communicate with outsiders in case of emergency.”  Read the full story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100303708.html

 

Podcast about the ‘trials’ of courtroom interpreters

How should the courtroom interpreter interpret their own role in the courtroom? And what discrepencies exist in understandings of this role, between defence and prosecution lawyers, judges, defendants, and the interpreters themselves?

This comprehensive and interesting Australian Radio National podcast may interest readers of the ‘what sorts’ blog, especially with respect to the interests of access to justice and the ability to be fully linguistically present at one’s own trial.

Review of Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking

Jackie Scully has written an interesting and provocative review of Open Your Eyes: Deaf Studies Talking , ed. H-Dirksen L. Bauman (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) for Metapsychology Online.  Here is an excerpt:

“Every now and again, something happens that creates a flurry of media interest in deafness. These days it’s often to do with biomedical technology and the response to it of the “culturally Deaf” — people with audiological deafness who consider themselves members of a cultural grouping rather than disabled. So we have the rejection (by some Deaf people but not all) of cochlear implants, or the use (by some Deaf people, but not all) of reproductive technologies to “select for” deafness. The resulting discussions might be described as dialogues of the deaf, if the pun were not so obvious and so bad, and in fact so wrong (most deaf people can dialogue with each other perfectly well. It’s dialogue between Deaf and hearing that can get problematic).”… 

Read the full review here: http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=4452

To Caption or Not to Caption

that is, no doubt, not THE question, but a question, one asked by Seek Geo in the captioned video appearing below the fold that shows its author signing a message that is also captioned. I would be curious to know if anyone with a screen-reader can read this (and those with them who cannot, which I suspect is most if not all, let us know)–and what they think about either the medium or the message (or both). And to know what deaf readers think about the same. And what sighted hearers also think.

CFP: Feminist Disability Studies in/and Feminist Bioethics

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

TO A SPECIAL ISSUE OF

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FEMINIST

APPROACHES TO BIOETHICS (IJFAB)

Vol. 3, no. 2, Fall, 2010

From the Margins to the Center:

Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics

Guest Editor, Shelley Tremain

In recent years, work done in mainstream bioethics has been challenged by the emerging field of disability studies. A growing number of disability theorists and activists point out that the views about disability and disabled people that mainstream bioethicists have articulated on matters such as prenatal testing, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide incorporate significant misunderstandings about them and amount to an institutionalized form of their oppression. While some feminist bioethicists have paid greater attention to the perspectives and arguments of disabled people than other bioethicists, these perspectives and arguments are rarely made central. Feminist disability theory remains marginalized even within feminist bioethics.

Go See “Out from Under”

Today (or I guess technically yesterday) I took a great tour of the exhibition Out from Under with one of the curators of the exhibit, Catherine Frazee. It was a wowser, and I was appropriately wowed. The exhibition, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, consists of 13 remembered objects, each chosen by a participant in a seminar run by several of the curators, and each telling us a small part of the history of disability. Included is the watch depicted here, which belonged to Mae Brown, the first deaf-blind Canadian to graduate with a university degree. (Small prizes for those who know in what year she graduated.) The exhibit has some affinities with the book that Sherry Turkle from MIT recently published, Evocative Objects: Things We Think With,

Deaf Swimmer

Since seeing an announcement about USA Swimming’s selection criteria for the 2009 Deaflympic Games in Taipei, Taiwan, I was reminded of a deaf swimmer that I grew up swimming with in the 1970s. Her name is Shannon Brophy and she broke a world record for the deaf in the 200 meter breastroke back in 1977 at the Deaflympics in Bucharest, Romania. She came in third at the 2005 World Master’s Games in Edmonton in the 50 meter breastroke competing against non-deaf athletes of her age group. She grew up swimming with the North Edmonton Sharks swim club for many years and was the first swimmer with a disability that I knew as a child.

It is interesting to note that the Deaflympics, held every 4 years, and are the longest running multi-sport event excluding the Olympics themselves. The first games, held in Paris in 1924, were also the first ever international sporting event for athletes with a disability.

“Coming Out”, by See Hear

What does coming out suggest to you? Well, prepare to be surprised! This is a smart, funny short film created by the UK’s See Hear and directed by Louis Neethling that itself came out last year. Sign(s) of the times. Watch at least the first 90 seconds … and see if you can stop watching more.

What can one say, except that coming out is not always easy, even in the most sympathetic of families …

Hat tip to Disability Studies at Temple.

Hear and Now

Hear and Now is a 2007 film by Taylor Brodsky that focuses on her deaf parents’ decision, late in their lives, to undergo cochlear implant surgery, in order to gain a significant level of hearing. It won an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival last year, and debuted in the US on the HBO network last Thursday. It is playing now on the Movie Channel network in Western Canada; I watched it last night. Catch it if you can; you can check out a review of it by Shelley Gabert at FilmStew.

Why might the film matter to What Sorters? Cochlear implant surgery is controversial in the Deaf/deaf communities for a number of reasons: here are two, one more theoretical, the other more practical. First, it is often seen as a way to make deaf people normal, a technological or surgical fix to a defect. This views deafness as a problem to be solved, rather than a human variant with its own pros and cons, and privileges hearing as normal over deafness as abnormal. Second, on the practical side, it disrupts functioning Deaf communities, which communicate linguistically through sign languages, and the lives of individuals in those communities, not least of all because the surgery is often less successful than it is projected as being in terms of the hearing capacity it generates, and the ways in which the downsides are downplayed by the hearing community, including doctors and medical staff.

Two recent books of related interest to check out on some of the issues in play here are Michael Chorost’s Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (2005), which details Chorost’s own experiences with cochlear implants and the decision to get them; and a collection of recent essays,