| For many, disability includes impairment, pain and fatigue, she says. "Health issues are a very important part of our lives, and we want health professionals to get a lot smarter than they are," says Gill, executive officer of the Society for Disability Studies. "I think we're realizing that all disciplines, including the health professionals, have a place in disability studies." Like many in the field, Linton, who uses a wheelchair, declines to discuss the specifics of her disability. "So many news stories have been turned into human-interest stories," she says. "The nature of my impairment dominates, rather than my ideas." Not surprisingly, Longmore describes himself and many of his colleagues in disability studies as "academics turned activists turned academics again." "Most of us had been involved already in disability rights and disability policy efforts," he says. "At some point, we realized that what we needed to do was the kind of research and analysis that any movement for social change needs." In contrast to the time not so long ago when people with disabilities were hidden from view in institutions, disability scholars display an in-your-face attitude. It's no coincidence that the Society for Disability Studies shares the initials of Students for a Democratic Society, the radical campus group of the 1960s. And "cripple," like "queer," is no longer just a put-down. In 1995, for example, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder's company, Brace Yourself Productions, produced the video documentary, Vital Signs: Crip Culture Talks Back. One of the field's rallying cries is "Nothing about us without us." Indeed, except for Davis, all of the people mentioned so far in this story have disabilities. Some in disability studies think that only those with firsthand experience should teach or conduct research in the field, says Mitchell, immediate past president of the Society for Disability Studies. But, he argues, "many people out there have a profound understanding of disabilities who don't have a disability themselves." Better to have a non-disabled person teach disability studies than no one at all, says Mitchell, who, with Snyder, has just joined the University of Illinois at Chicago faculty. "It's very complicated to have a white person teaching black lit, which I've done," he says, referring to his last academic position on the mostly white campus of Northern Michigan University in Marquette. "If I don't teach this," Mitchell says he figured, "where are these kids going to read this stuff?" Susan Schweik, who is developing an undergraduate program in disability studies at the University of California, Berkeley, describes herself as "contingently able-bodied." "In the longer run, we will probably all be disabled." Schweik, an associate English professor, became interested in disability studies when planning to write a biography of Josephine Miles, a 20th century poet who developed severe rheumatoid arthritis as a child. "I thought I needed to get a grip on what this meant. I started looking around for research on disability." As an able-bodied teacher of disability studies, "I have felt plenty of suspicion and sometimes open objection. That's never easy," she says. "The last disability studies class I taught was a disabilities in literature class. I had several students who were campus disabilities activists. One of them had graduated already. It was clear she came back to keep an eye on the class." If she had her way, Schweik says, only half in jest, she'd become obsolete because Berkeley would hire many more scholars with disabilities to teach disability studies. As Linton says: "It was clear to me from the very early moments of my disability that it was significant, that it was going to be an important shaper of my life and my experience, and I've been right back to ISSUES HOME |