Suggestions for writing on disability themes
  1. Cultural representation (art, film, literature)
  2. History and criticism
  3. Matters of public policy


1. Cultural representations

Art (Stanford's Cummings Art Library):

  • The Beggars, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1568 (painting)
  • Milton Dictating to his Daughters, Henry Fuseli, 1794 (painting)
  • For more suggestions, go to "Art" under NYU Database (button above).


 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Fala
Neil Estern   Roosevelt Memorial

 

Films (on reserve at the Media Center, basement of Stanford's Green Library):

  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923, 1939, 1996)
  • The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
  • The Miracle Worker (1962)
  • Dr. Strangelove (1964)
  • My Left Foot (1989)
  • Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
  • The Waterdance (1992)
  • What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1994)
  • The Other Sister (1999)
  • Mifune (1999)
  • The Tic Code (1999)
  • Molly (2000)
  • Shower (2000)
  • For more suggestions, go to "Film" under NYU Database (button above).

 


Literature:

  • Sophocles, Oedipus the King (play)
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV (parts 2 & 3) & Richard III (play)
  • John Milton, Sonnet 19 ("When I consider how my light is spent") and Paradise Lost (poem  &  epic)
  • Daniel Defoe, The Surprising Adventures of Duncan Campbell (non-fictional prose)
  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "To the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace" (poem mentioning Alexander Pope's disability)
  • Henry Fielding, Amelia (novel)
  • Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop and A Christmas Carol (novel & novella)
  • Herman Melville, Moby Dick (epic novel)
  • Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (novel)
  • John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (novel)
  • William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (novel)
  • Christie Brown, My Left Foot (autobiography)
  • Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (non-fictional prose)
  • For more suggestions, go to "Literature" under NYU Database (button above).

 

2. History and criticism:

  • Martin Norden, The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies (1994)
  • Henri-Jacques Stiker, A History of Disability (1997; trans. 1999)
  • Martha Edwards, "Constructions of Physical Disability in the Ancient World: The Community Concept" in The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability (1997)
  • Lennard Davis, "Dr. Johnson, Amelia, and the Discourse of Disability in the Eighteenth Century" in "Defects": Engendering the Modern Body (2000)
  • Felicity Nussbaum, "Dumb Virgins, Blind Ladies, and Eunuchs: Fictions of Defect" in "Defects": Engendering the Modern Body (2000)
  • David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, "Representation and Its Discontents: The Uneasy Home of Disability in Literature and Film" in Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse (2000)
  • David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, "Performing Deformity: The Making and Unmaking of Richard III" in Narrative Prosthesis (see above)
  • Carol Poore, "'But Roosevelt Could Walk': Envisioning Disability in Germany and the United States" in Points of Contact: Disability, Art, and Culture (2000).
  • Lennard Davis, "The Bell Curve, the Novel, and the Invention of the Disabled Body in the Nineteenth Century" in The Disability Studies Reader (1997)
  • David Gerber, "Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans of World War II in The Best Years of our Lives" in Disabled Veterans in History (2000)
  • Jenny Morris, "A Feminist Perspective" in Framed: Interrogating Disability in the Media (1997)
  • Mary Klages, "The Semiotics of Disability" in Woeful Afflictions: Disability an Sentimentality in Victorian America (1999)

 

3. Matters of public policy:

  • Univ. of Alabama v. Garrett (2/21/01).  In this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited the disabled from suing states under the 1990 "Americans with Disabilities Act" (A.D.A).  Disabled students attending UC Berkeley now cannot sue Cal to compel it to provide full access to dorms and classes, but disabled students at Stanford University still can sue Stanford.  Should the disabled be able to bring litigation to compel a state school to comply with federal law (i.e., the A.D.A.) just as they are able to sue a private university to force it to provide equal access?
  • Crisis of the democratic subject.  Is it ever defensible to restrict the rights of a mentally impaired person (i.e., a person suffering from schizophrenia), even when doing so may save that person's (or someone else's) life?  For example, is it justifiable to force a patient to take a medication that can prevent a manic episode from occurring, one that may cause the person to engage in a violent act?  Or is forcing an individual to take a medication an infringement of his or her liberty?
  • Special education.  Should special education programs for the disabled students, as they currently exist, be limited or expanded?  Are disabled students being adequately served?  On the one hand, is it justifiable to support costly special education programs when such programs divert much-needed funds away from regular classroom activities?  On the other hand, are some educational districts merely paying "lip service" to the needs of the disabled in order to avoid litigation, appearing to comply with the dictates of the A.D.A. but all the while setting up invisible hurdles making it extremely difficult for parents to obtain services for their disabled children?  How do we judge when the effort to accommodate the disabled is not enough?  How much is enough?  How much is too much? In sum, what should constitute our society's minimal standards? Conversely, what limits, if any, should be established for creating access to education?
  • Discrimination in medical insurance.  Almost all medical insurance companies consider various forms of disability to constitute "pre-existing" conditions and, therefore, deny coverage on their basis. This mass exclusion of the disabled means that millions of Americans are denied access to such insurance (are not allowed to "private pay" for insurance).  Unless a disabled person is able to find work with a company offering blanket coverage for all of its employees through an HMO, that individual is not able to receive insurance. This situation becomes a "Catch-22" because many companies offering blanket coverage will not hire a disabled individual.  Thus, the disabled--a group that especially needs medical insurance--is unable both to buy private insurance and to obtain group coverage.   In a free-market economy such as ours, do insurance companies have the right to refuse to sell private insurance to the disabled, or does this refusal constitute discrimination?
  • High unemployment rate.  The unemployment rate among disabled adults exceeds 50%.  The A.D.A. in part was meant to remedy this high rate, but since the passage of the law in 1990, the rate has gone even higher for this group.  Fearful of both the added expense of accommodating the disabled and the litigation a dissatisfied disabled employee might bring, companies look for ways to not hire them in the first place.  In light of this (unintended) result, was the passage of the A.D.A. a good or a bad thing?
  • Who qualifies as disabled?  Should every claim of disability be acknowledged?  Are emotional problems a form of disability?  Are slow learners disabled?  Is dyslexia a disability?  What are the social, legal, political, and financial ramifications of dramatically broadening the definition of disability so that the category encompasses a very large group?  Are some parents using the "Americans with Disabilities Act" (A.D.A.) as a loophole for obtaining special privileges for their mildly disabled children--disabilities that until recently would not even have been recognized as such a short time ago, thus harming children with serious problems?  By claiming protection under (and the benefits of) the A.D.A., does a parent's assertion that his or her child has a learning disorder disservice highly involved children (those with severe multiple disorders)?  Do such parents drain the system of resources so that eventually it will become unworkable even for children who really need special services, children who are blind or children with Downs syndrome, severe autism, cerebral palsy, paralysis, mental retardation, or genetic defects?  Or, should milder forms of disability be recognized for what they are--impairments that also need special attention and, therefore, special funding?
  • Mainstreaming.  Is mainstreaming (total inclusion programs for disabled children) always good?  Disabled children learn a great deal more when they associate with able children than they do when left to themselves, just as able children learn a lot from being around the disabled.  Disabled children emulate the able; conversely, able children through contact with disabled kids gradually come to see them as being less mysterious, strange, and/or threatening. Thus, the benefits of mainstreaming often are mutual.  Still, do instances exist in which mainstreaming is detrimental for the disabled?  For example, if a teacher has not been adequately prepared to teach a disabled child, is that child better or worse off in that teacher's classroom versus being placed in one where the teacher has received special training?
  • Are "Jerry's Kids" being demeaned?  Do the efforts to raise money for various charities (March of Dimes, Easter Seals, etc.) using a "poster child" approach to promote giving ultimately undermine the self-esteem of the very children they are trying to help?  Certain disability activists assert that this indeed is the case.  Should we accept these activists' view?  Aren't evoking pity and making disabled kids objects of pathos (as Jerry Lewis has been accused of doing) necessary for causes helping these children to receive funding? If the public isn't manipulated into feeling sorry for disabled kids, what will motivate it to contribute the large sums of money that Easter Seals and the March of Dimes need to do their work?
  • To hear or not to hear.  Amazing technological breakthroughs are making it possible today for people born deaf to be able to hear. These advanced technologies threaten to reduce the number of Americans using sign language as a communicative medium.  Those members of the deaf community who consider sign language to be both an integral part of their identity as well as an essential element for creating solidarity in their ranks view with suspicion the implementation of these new technologies.  Is this new technology bringing hearing to the deaf a menace to deaf community?  For example, what will become of Gallaudet University, the nation's only university for deaf students, if these technologies become widespread?  
  • Fetal tissue and stem-cell research.  Should the cells from aborted fetuses be used to seek cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases?  Is such research complicity in murder (as anti-abortion activities assert), or is it an attempt to improve human lives (as researchers maintain)?
  • "Make my day."  In 1998, a disabled woman staying in a Carmel hotel owned by Clint Eastwood found that the actor had made little effort to bring his establishment into compliance with the A.D.A, so she sued him for a seven-figure sum.  In his defense, Eastwood says that he did all he could to bring the old building housing the hotel into compliance without compromising its quaint character.  He also claims that the woman, aware of his "deep pockets," is just attempting to cash under the provisions of the A.D.A.  Eastwood would have the public believe he is the victim in this case.  The matter was settled in late 2000.  Regardless of the outcome, who do you think was in the right?

 

 

 

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