Papers by Jennifer Erkulwater
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Studies in American Political Development, 2019
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Journal of Policy History, 2018
Scholars point out a tension between racial justice and disability rights activism. Although raci... more Scholars point out a tension between racial justice and disability rights activism. Although racial minorities are more likely to become disabled than whites, both disability activism and the historiography of disability politics tend to focus on the experience and achievements of whites. This article examines how disability rights activists of the 1970s sought to build a united movement of all people with disabilities and explains why these efforts were unable to overcome cleavages predicated on race. Activists drew from New Left ideas of community and self-help as well as the New Right rhetoric of market freedoms to articulate a vision of liberation for people with disabilities. Though they yearned for racial solidarity, in practice, activists could not overcome institutions that separated antipoverty and racial politics from disability policy, nor could they figure out how to incorporate minority voices in an identitybased movement forged around disability rather than color.
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Disability studies emerged in the 1980s as part of a cluster of politicized identity-based interd... more Disability studies emerged in the 1980s as part of a cluster of politicized identity-based interdisciplinary fields of study in race, ethnicity, and gender that theorized and sought to actualize greater inclusion in academia and society writ large. Political science, however, has been slow to incorporate critical studies of identity and lacks critical sustained engagement with disability. This paper seeks to fill this disciplinary lacunae. I draw from recent theorizing within disability studies and political science to develop a framework for examining how disability structures politics and, in turn, how politics structures disability. I then illustrate the ways in which engagement between disability studies and political science can appropriately center disability within politics and deepen our understanding of political conflict in the United States.
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Frontiers in Spiritual Leadership, 2016
On a spring day in late April 2013, police outside the General Assembly building in Raleigh, Nort... more On a spring day in late April 2013, police outside the General Assembly building in Raleigh, North Carolina, arrested a group of 17 protesters for trespassing and acts of civil disobedience. Affiliated with 16 organizations representing clergy, labor unions, and civil, women’s, and gay rights groups, the protesters staged a sit-in to object to recent legislative decisions that limited the ability of death row inmates to challenge their sentences; denied expanded access to health care for low-income residents; and cut spending on public education, unemployment benefits, and income support for the working poor. The protesters’ call for inclusion and equality struck a nerve among progressive activists and everyday voters. By the end of summer, their small act of defiance had grown into a grassroots social justice movement. Each week, on “Moral Monday,” hundreds, sometimes thousands, of protesters gathered at the state capitol and in cities throughout North Carolina to march, pray, sing gospel hymns, and occupy public buildings in an effort to make clear their demand that government conform to Christian principles of justice and compassion. Their tactics of spiritual resistance made headlines across the country and inspired similar demonstrations in other states.
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The Unheavenly Chorus, 2012
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Perspectives on Politics, 2007
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Journal of Children and Poverty, 2013
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Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 2011
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PS: Political Science and Politics Reviewers, 2010 ... In 2010, PS: Political Science and Politic... more PS: Political Science and Politics Reviewers, 2010 ... In 2010, PS: Political Science and Politics published articles covering a vast range of topics. The journal's commitment to
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PS: Political Science & Politics, 2016
ABSTRACTLarge numbers permeate political life, and students of political science can expect to en... more ABSTRACTLarge numbers permeate political life, and students of political science can expect to encounter a wide range of numbers in newspaper articles, course readings, and statistics. Recent research in cognitive psychology demonstrates that American adults make systematic errors when comparing numbers in the millions, billions, and trillions. Political decisions made by voters often require weighing large quantities that range across many orders of magnitude, which is difficult without at least a basic understanding of relative magnitudes. If students also lack an understanding of large numbers, professors cannot meaningfully teach them about political phenomena involving such magnitudes. The authors designed and tested an exercise to improve students’ accuracy in dealing with large magnitudes, which had immediate and sustained effects on their political judgments about information involving large numbers.
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Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014
This chapter examines the political development of the nation’s two largest income support progra... more This chapter examines the political development of the nation’s two largest income support programs for people with disabilities, Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Although the creation of cash benefits for disabled workers was controversial, once established, disability benefits expanded steadily. Today DI and SSI cover a wide array of disabilities and provide support to children and adults, some of who have worked little, if at all. Yet despite dramatic program growth, disabilities still create great economic hardship. Moreover, despite the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and a variety of work incentives, employment levels among the disabled are low, and DI and SSI face major challenges transitioning beneficiaries into paid employment and preparing disabled children for financial self-sufficiency in adulthood.
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Studies in American Political Development, 2019
In contemporary America, identifying as a person with a disability is one of the many ways in whi... more In contemporary America, identifying as a person with a disability is one of the many ways in which people acknowledge, even celebrate, who they are. Yet several decades ago, few persons with disabilities saw their condition as an identity to be embraced, let alone to serve as the basis for affinity and collective mobilization. The transformation of disability from unmitigated tragedy to a collective and politicized identity emerged in national politics, not in the 1960s or 1970s, as is commonly thought, but in the 1940s. During those years, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) set out to galvanize the nation's blind men and women, most of them poor and unemployed, to demand the economic security and opportunity enjoyed by sighted Americans. This aspiration for equal citizenship led the NFB into protracted contests with the Social Security Administration (SSA) over aid to the poor and sharpened the organization's resolve to represent the nation's civilian blind. Lo...
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Journal of Policy History
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Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology News, 2008
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Journal of Policy History, 2008
... Policymakers later rescinded this expansion and many children with adhd were cut from the ssi... more ... Policymakers later rescinded this expansion and many children with adhd were cut from the ssi program in the latter half of the 1990s, but in the first half of that decade rates of new children enrolling in the program with a qualifying diagnosis of adhd increased almost threefold ...
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Papers by Jennifer Erkulwater