Great New Book on Disclosing Disability

Back in October 2013, I had the good fortune to attend the “Disability Disclosure in/and Higher Education Conference.” It was a disability studies rock-star event: many of my favorite thinkers presented, and I learned tons of stuff. The focus was on disclosing in order to get accommodations: unusually, we examined both faculty and student experiences. An essay collection resulted from the bubbly stew of ideas, new from the University Michigan Press:

Negotiating Disability: Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, Laura T. Eisenman, James M. Jones, eds.

https://www.press.umich.edu/9426902/negotiating_disability

I sampled it via JSTOR, it’s also available on other electronic databases: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1012609341.

I was particularly delighted by the essay challenging stoicism and disability pride from Josh Lukin joshlukinworks. Josh floats in my ethereal intersection of disability studies and SF, and I first met him at WisCon. He's a wicked punster, a much-lauded teacher, and my kind of all-around intellectual. Josh rightly points out that when us social-model types push “disability pride” we can also create our own version of the “overcoming” trope we love to hate.

Essay nut graph:

begin quote
Once one realizes that one’s disability is not a moral failing, one is supposed, judging by the syllabi, books, and blog posts I have encountered, to embrace the social model of disability, become a proud activist, and write a memoir. I do have an unpublished draft of a memoir (Urgency: Growing Up with Crohn’s Disease), and I have been credited with activism in my teaching and scholarship. But the social model part and the pride part don’t work well for me, and I know from a number of students and from conversations in the disability community that I am not unique in that. So I want to consider why that might be, and how theoretical and science-fictional models offer alternative ways of being disabled–ways that are not really new discoveries on my part but that are already immanent in crip culture.
quote ends

“Science Fiction, Affect, and Crip Self-Invention–or, How Philip K. Dick Made Me Disabled.” pp. 227–242. www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.9426902.17

A reboot for chronic fatigue syndrome research

Excellent NATURE article with pocket history of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: how it's been ignored, the crap we patients have put up with, and how it may now be getting the right attention paid. With many references for further research.

Good first read for family, friends and medicos who need schooling.

Nature 3 January 2018
A reboot for chronic fatigue syndrome research

Research into this debilitating disease has a rocky past. Now scientists may finally be finding their footing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08965-0