ANNOUNCEMENT: CFP Victorian Disability

CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Issue: Victorian Disability Fall 2009

Submission Date: 15 September 2008

The Victorian Review invites submissions for its forthcoming special issue devoted to Victorian Disability. From the development of new sign systems for the blind and deaf, to the growth of eugenics, from Dickens’ one-legged man, Silas Wegg, to the disabled communities that populate the fiction of Charlotte Yonge, the Victorians were creating and consolidating ideas of ability, normalcy, difference, health, and illness.

This special issue seeks to explore the constructions of ability and disability that circulated in Victorian Britain and abroad. Recent critical work in Disability Studies has suggested disability as another mode of analysis alongside class, race, gender and sexuality in the understanding of culture. How can a focus on ableness complicate traditional readings of gender, class, race, and sexuality in the period? We particularly invite submissions that engage with the challenge that Disability Studies poses for the future of Victorian Studies. To what extent might Disability Studies pressure conventional disciplinary boundaries? How might we approach Victorian Disability Studies while recognizing that the term “disability” and the meanings we now grant to it as a general category did not exist in the Victorian period?

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

The Representation of Disability in Victorian Literature

Disability and Cultural Production (blind poets, deaf artists)

Disability and the Practice of Reading

Disability Communities and Cultures

Medicine and Disability

Social Darwinism and Eugenics

Industrialization and Disability

The Materiality of Disability (canes, wheelchairs, ear trumpets)

The Languages of Disability (Braille, Sign)

Celebrity and Disability

The Spectacularisation of Disability

Health, Disability and Invalidism

The Institutionalization of Disability (educational, governmental and charitable)

Essays must be between 5000 and 8000 words and formatted according to MLA guidelines.

Please submit electronic copies of essays to both of the issue’s guest editors by September 15, 2008:

Christopher Keep
Department of English
The University of Western Ontario
ckeep@uwo.ca

Jennifer Esmail
Department of English Queen’s University
3je@queensu.ca

ANNOUNCEMENT: Post-doctoral Fellowship in Race and Difference at Emory University, 2008-9

Emory University

The Race and Difference Initiative (RDI)

Post-doctoral Fellowship Call for Applications

"Race and Difference in International Perspective"

The Race and Difference Strategic Initiative (RDI) at Emory University announces an RDI post-doctoral fellowship to begin fall, 2008, focusing on the theme "Race and Difference in International Perspective." RDI investigates race in relation to other forms of stigmatizing difference.

Research associated with the project should engage with one or more of the following issues in cross-national or cross-cultural perspective: how particular forms of difference are constructed, pathologized, and/or stereotyped; the intersectionality of different forms and categories of stigmatized difference; how the foregrounding of particular kinds of difference elide, mask, or otherwise inflect the perception and attribution of other forms of difference.

The field of specialization is open across the social sciences, humanities, and law. This is a one-year post-doctoral fellowship for the 2008-09 academic year that may be renewed on the basis of outstanding performance and availability of funds. The post-doctoral fellow will teach one course or equivalent per semester.

PhD dissertation or JD degree must be successfully completed at the time of application, and must have been received within the past six years.

The fellowship includes an annual stipend of $45,000, Emory benefits, a relocation allotment, $2,500 for research and travel, and up to $2,600 for equipment.

Information about RDI can be found on our website at http://www.rdi.emory.edu/.

Applications should include:

§ application letter that describes the candidate's research background and interests, including the title of the proposed post-doctoral research project

§ CV

§ abstract and annotated table of contents of the applicant's doctoral thesis or equivalent

§ 1-2 paragraph statement of teaching interests

§ writing sample/s

§ three letters of recommendation

Applications should be submitted as a single e-mail with the subject line "RDI post-doctoral fellowship," with constituent materials enclosed as file attachments.

Applications should be addressed to Ms. Corina Domozick, Financial Administrator, RDI and sent to her at cdomozi@emory.edu>.

Review will begin May 10, 2008 and will continue until the position is filled. Recommenders should supply references as file attachments to an e-mail message to Ms. Domozick with the subject line "RDI post-doc reference."

Emory University is an equal opportunity employer, and RDI specifically encourages applications from minorities and women, including those of international background or ancestry.

RESOURCE: Online bibliographies available

1. Disability and Deafness in East Asia: social and educational responses, from antiquity to recent times:
http://independentliving.org/docs7/miles200708.html [also as .pdf]

This introduces and lists 900 articles, chapters and books having some concern with disability, deafness or mental disorder, in China, Korea and Japan, mostly in English, some in German or French, with some annotation.

2. Disability and Deafness in the context of Religion, Spirituality and Belief, in Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian Cultures and Histories.
http://independentliving.org/docs7/miles200707.html [also as .pdf]

This bibliography introduces and lists 450 items, across the beliefs, religions and cultures of the Middle East and much of Asia, from antiquity to the present.

3. Social Responses to Disability & Poverty in Economically Weaker Countries: trends, critique, and lessons usually not learnt.
http://www.independentliving.org/docs7/miles200603.html [also as .pdf]

This annotated bibliography has 250 modern and historical items from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and a few from S. America.

***
Many thanks to the Independent Living Institute staff in making these bibliographies freely available online.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Journal issue of interest

Essays in Philosophy: A Biannual Journal has published an issue on the "Philosophy of Disability."

The Table of Contents can be found here:

http://www.humboldt.edu/~essays/

RESOURCE: Literature, Arts, and Medicine Blog

I call attention to the Literature, Arts, and Medicine blog edited by Felice Aull, Ph.D., M.A.

This blog is linked to and is an extension of The NYU School of Medicine medical humanities web site and the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. It is intended to be a forum for scholarly discussion of ongoing projects in medical, nursing, premedical, graduate, and postgraduate education and research that use the humanities, social sciences, and the arts to address current issues in medicine and bioscience– from a variety of perspectives.

http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/blog/

ANNOUNCEMENT: Current Journal Articles on Distability History

About once a month, and appearing as an an occasional feature of H-Disability, Penny L. Richards, a PhD Research Scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women and Co-editor of H-Education and H-Disability, compiles and posts a listing of recently published historical articles about disability (somewhat broadly defined). These articles are usually found on the "current periodicals" shelves at a university library, from the most recent two calendar years (right now, 2007-2008). Some of them are culled from online Table of Contents sites maintained by journal publishers. Additional sources include book chapters in new collections, cites for new books, and cites for review articles, new books, and new dissertations.

She welcomes contributions offlist that are compiled into subsequent postings . Her usual caveats for contributions are:

• "1) your definitions of history and disability may exclude some of these articles, and include others;
• 2) listing here does not necessarily constitute a recommendation of the articles involved; and
• 3) only English-language tables of contents or abstracts are usually culled (but works in other languages are welcome from contributors)."

ARTICLES:

Calabritto, Monica. "A Case of Melancholic Humors and 'Dilucida Intervalla,'" _Intellectual History Review_ 18(1)(March 2008): 139-154. (About a murder trial in Bologna, 1588, that focused on the defendant's mental health history)

Garton, Stephen. "'Fit Only for the Scrap Heap': Rebuilding Returned Soldier Manhood in Australia after 1945," _Gender & History_ 20(1)(April 2008): 48-67.

Gowland, Angus. "The Ethics of Renaissance Melancholy," _Intellectual History Review_ 18(1)(March 2008): 103-117.

Grubgeld, Elizabeth. "Body, Privacy, and Community: Reading Disability in the Late Fiction of Andre Dubus," _Religion & Literature_ 39(2)(Summer 2007): 33-54.

Hamlin, Alexandra, and Peter Oakes, "Reflections on Deinstitutionalization in the United Kingdom," _Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities_ 5(1)(March 2008): 47-55.

Jones, Edgar, and Shahina Rahman. "Framing Mental Illness, 1923-1939: The Maudsley Hospital and its Patients," _Social History of Medicine_ 21(2008): 107-125.

Lachapelle, Sofie. "Educating Idiots: Utopian Ideals and Practical Organization Regarding Idiocy inside Nineteenth-Century French Asylums," _Science in Context_ 20(4)(December 2007): 627-648.

McCarthy, Angela. "Ethnicity, Migration, and the Lunatic Aslum in Early Twentieth-Century Auckland, New Zealand," _Social History of Medicine_ 21(2008): 47-65.

Packham, Catherine. "Disability and Sympathetic Sociability in Enlightenment Scotland: the Case of Thomas Blacklock," _British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies_ 30(3)(2007): 423-438.

Rogers, Naomi. "'Silence has its own Stories': Elizabeth Kenny, Polio, and the Culture of Medicine," _Social History of Medicine_ 21 (2008): 145-161.

Rosen, Russell S. "Descriptions of the American Deaf Community, 1830-2000: Epistemic Foundations," _Disability & Society_ 23(2) (2008): 129-140.

Schweik, Susan. "Disability Politics and American Literary History: Some Suggestions," _American Literary History_ 20(2008): 217-237. (See also the response: Catherine Prendergast, "And Now, A Necessarily Pathetic Response: A Response to Susan Schweik," _Am Lit Hist_ 20(2008): 238-244.)

Sharpe, Andrew N. "Structured Like a Monster: Understanding Human Difference Through a Legal Category," _Law Critique_ 18 (2007): 207–28.

REVIEWS:

Joseph Melling reviewed Arthur McIvor and Ronald Johnston, _Miner's Lung: A History of Dust Disease in British Coal Mining_ (Ashgate 2007), in _Economic History Review_ 61(2)(May 2008): 514-515.

John Stewart reviewed Robert Bivins and John V. Pickstone, eds., _Medicine, Madness, and Social History: Essays in Honour of Roy Porter_ (Palgrave Macmillan 2007), in _Social History of Medicine_ 21 (1)(2008): 185-186.

Angela Turner reviewed Sally French, John Swain, Dorothy Atkinson and Michelle Moore, eds., _An Oral History of the Education of Visually Impaired People: Telling Stories for Inclusive Futures_ (Edwin Mellen Press 2006), in _Social History of Medicine_ 21(1)(2008): 186-187.

Robert T. Joy reviewed Edgar Jones and Simon Wessely, _Shell Shock to PTSD: Military Psychiatry from 1900 to the Gulf War_ (Psychology Press 2005), in the _Bulletin of the History of Medicine_ 82(1) (2008): 240-241.

James W. Trent reviewed Paul J. Castellani, _From Snake Pits to Cash Cows: Politics and Public Institutions in New York_ (SUNY Press 2005), in the _Bulletin of the History of Medicine_ 82(1)(2008): 237-238.

Jeffrey S. Reznick reviewed Teresa Meade and David Serlin, eds., _Disability and History_ (issue 94 of _Radical History Review_, Winter 2006), in the _Bulletin of the History of Medicine_ 82(1) (2008): 226-227.

L. S. Jacyna reviewed Elizabeth Green Musselman, _Nervous Conditions: Science and the Body Politic in Early Industrial Britain_ (SUNY Press 2006), in the _Bulletin of the History of Medicine_ 82(1)(2008): 200-201.

DISSERTATIONS:

Maryellen Riley (EdD, Boston University 2007): "The Education of Children with Disabilities in Germany from 1945-1970"

Carolyn Ball (PhD, Capella University 2007): "The History of American Sign Language Interpreting Education"

Touba Ghadessi Fleming (PhD, Northwestern University 2007): "Identity and Physical Deformity in Italian Court Portraits, 1550-1650: Dwarves, Hirsutes, and Castrati"

Patrick Gonder (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee 2007): "Like a Monstrous Jigsaw: Genetics, Evolution, and the Body in the Horror Films of the 1950s"

Contributions received this month from: David M. Turner, Jonathan Erlen

Compiled by Penny L. Richards
PhD Research Scholar, UCLA Center for the Study of Women
Co-editor, H-Education and H-Disability
turley2@earthlink.net