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).
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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).
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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)
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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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