This article suggests “disabling” writing program administration, which means bringing the insigh... more This article suggests “disabling” writing program administration, which means bringing the insights of disabled people and perspectives in order to innovate, include, and transgress expected and exclusionary norms in writing program administration. Focusing on the stories we tell about ourselves, I analyze how WPA narratives are structured to shun or tolerate disability and how these narratives establish normative expectations of who WPAs are and can be, in terms of disability status. Using the critical and activist lens of disability studies, I identify how anxiety and depression often feature as inevitable and intolerable in our narratives; I examine how triumph-over-adversity tales are dangerous for disabled WPAs and all WPAs; and I punctuate my analysis with my own narrative of depression. More broadly, I suggest that disability can inform all writing program work by drawing attention to the bodies that do such work.
This article suggests increased attention to how medical discourses of gastrointestinal (GI) diso... more This article suggests increased attention to how medical discourses of gastrointestinal (GI) disorder and distress are fraught with social assumptions and consequences by examining nineteenth-century and contemporary medical texts focused on chronic constipation and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I suggest that these medical discourses present what I call the “gastrointestinal woman,” who is characterized as having unjustified anxiety and is to blame for her condition. My approach to understanding, and ultimately revising, the representation of the gastrointestinal woman is shaped by disability studies scholarship, which encourages intervention in problematic medical discourses and more active shaping of discourses of chronic pain and illness by those who have these conditions.
This article suggests that IBS, and its relationship to disability studies, can be better underst... more This article suggests that IBS, and its relationship to disability studies, can be better understood by examining the rhetorics surrounding gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. To understand the function of GI rhetorics, I examine three rhetorical sites: (1) communal meal settings and the rhetorical politics of food refusal; (2) historical and contemporary texts that gender gastrointestinal distress; and (3) rhetorics of cure and control in advertising for GI-related products, particularly Zelnorm and Activia. The article concludes that changing attitudes about gastrointestinal disorders is not so much about controlling our bodies, but reclaiming the rhetorics of these disorders.
Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Jan 1, 2010
The article examines the role of disability in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s popular theories ... more The article examines the role of disability in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s popular theories of cognitive metaphor and metaphor acquisition, and concludes that these theories are ableist in assuming that bodies have particular physical/cognitive/sensory experiences and related metaphorical expressions. In response, a disability approach to metaphor is suggested that engages the diversity of disability; refrains from policing metaphor; encourages transgression from the disability community; and invites creative and artistic reinterpretations of metaphor. This new approach is grounded in a critique of the metaphor knowing is seeing, which is commonly employed in academic writing and engaged in Lakoff and Johnson’s work.
This article positions letters of recommendation as important and troubling indicators of faculty... more This article positions letters of recommendation as important and troubling indicators of faculty beliefs about diversity and access in higher education. I focus on the disclosure of disability, both by examining the history of disclosing stigmatized difference and by analyzing five letters of recommendation for an aspiring graduate student with a traumatic brain injury. I suggest that faculty must revise their letter-writing practices and engage in a type of rhetorical forecasting that questions well-intentioned disclosures of difference and imagines how various letters form a composite sketch of a candidate.
This dissertation theoretically and empirically examines how disability is negotiated and articul... more This dissertation theoretically and empirically examines how disability is negotiated and articulated in university texts and practices, refiguring the relationship of texts, bodies, and identity, and revealing how disability perspectives can usefully complicate and enrich language theory and analysis. In university settings, a refiguring such as the one I suggest means considering how rhetorical access complicates material access, and in the larger context of institutional discourse, my analysis points toward the embodied nature of all rhetorical positions. More broadly, I suggest reconsidering the pejorative positioning of disability in a culture that is constantly negotiating public and private scripts regarding acceptable bodies.
Using scholarship from rhetoric and composition, critical discourse analysis, and disability studies, Chapter One develops a theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing the rhetorical nature of disability. The project then considers a network of data, beginning with an analysis of 97 undergraduate admissions applications, which provides a broad view of the medicalized discursive relationship of disability and universities (Chapters Two and Three). Chapter Four considers the politics of disability disclosure by analyzing admissions essays by students with disabilities, and by plotting the distance between what rhetors seek to do, as explained in audiotaped interviews, and the texts they ultimately produce. Chapter Five concentrates on letters of recommendation, examining how graduate students are "outed" by faculty members' troubling attempts to "normalize" disability. Finally, Chapter Six focuses on how administrators, instructors, and medical authorities participate in the positioning of disability by analyzing a corpus of documents from a university disability office, as well as faculty and instructor responses to a survey regarding letters they receive from disability offices about students with disabilities. Overall, these various texts and practices form a discursive chain which begins with the student articulating her identity to the university, and ends with a letter written by university administrators and sent to instructors, revealing the literal and theoretical impact of university discourses on disability identity.
... In "Passion and Action: Reflections on Learning to Do Disability Studies in ... more ... In "Passion and Action: Reflections on Learning to Do Disability Studies in the Classroom and Beyond," Jennifer Paterson, Heather Willis, and Jessica Hogan ... We are also happy to include a visual art submission, produced by Carmen Caraballo and described by Julia Rodas. ...
Greetings from your new DSQ Reviews Editors, Amy Vidali and Margaret Price. We're excite... more Greetings from your new DSQ Reviews Editors, Amy Vidali and Margaret Price. We're excited to begin reviewing for DSQ, and we want to briefly share some of the innovations we plan to bring to the reviews section, and provide some basic guidelines for new and ...
This article suggests “disabling” writing program administration, which means bringing the insigh... more This article suggests “disabling” writing program administration, which means bringing the insights of disabled people and perspectives in order to innovate, include, and transgress expected and exclusionary norms in writing program administration. Focusing on the stories we tell about ourselves, I analyze how WPA narratives are structured to shun or tolerate disability and how these narratives establish normative expectations of who WPAs are and can be, in terms of disability status. Using the critical and activist lens of disability studies, I identify how anxiety and depression often feature as inevitable and intolerable in our narratives; I examine how triumph-over-adversity tales are dangerous for disabled WPAs and all WPAs; and I punctuate my analysis with my own narrative of depression. More broadly, I suggest that disability can inform all writing program work by drawing attention to the bodies that do such work.
This article suggests increased attention to how medical discourses of gastrointestinal (GI) diso... more This article suggests increased attention to how medical discourses of gastrointestinal (GI) disorder and distress are fraught with social assumptions and consequences by examining nineteenth-century and contemporary medical texts focused on chronic constipation and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). I suggest that these medical discourses present what I call the “gastrointestinal woman,” who is characterized as having unjustified anxiety and is to blame for her condition. My approach to understanding, and ultimately revising, the representation of the gastrointestinal woman is shaped by disability studies scholarship, which encourages intervention in problematic medical discourses and more active shaping of discourses of chronic pain and illness by those who have these conditions.
This article suggests that IBS, and its relationship to disability studies, can be better underst... more This article suggests that IBS, and its relationship to disability studies, can be better understood by examining the rhetorics surrounding gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. To understand the function of GI rhetorics, I examine three rhetorical sites: (1) communal meal settings and the rhetorical politics of food refusal; (2) historical and contemporary texts that gender gastrointestinal distress; and (3) rhetorics of cure and control in advertising for GI-related products, particularly Zelnorm and Activia. The article concludes that changing attitudes about gastrointestinal disorders is not so much about controlling our bodies, but reclaiming the rhetorics of these disorders.
Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, Jan 1, 2010
The article examines the role of disability in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s popular theories ... more The article examines the role of disability in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s popular theories of cognitive metaphor and metaphor acquisition, and concludes that these theories are ableist in assuming that bodies have particular physical/cognitive/sensory experiences and related metaphorical expressions. In response, a disability approach to metaphor is suggested that engages the diversity of disability; refrains from policing metaphor; encourages transgression from the disability community; and invites creative and artistic reinterpretations of metaphor. This new approach is grounded in a critique of the metaphor knowing is seeing, which is commonly employed in academic writing and engaged in Lakoff and Johnson’s work.
This article positions letters of recommendation as important and troubling indicators of faculty... more This article positions letters of recommendation as important and troubling indicators of faculty beliefs about diversity and access in higher education. I focus on the disclosure of disability, both by examining the history of disclosing stigmatized difference and by analyzing five letters of recommendation for an aspiring graduate student with a traumatic brain injury. I suggest that faculty must revise their letter-writing practices and engage in a type of rhetorical forecasting that questions well-intentioned disclosures of difference and imagines how various letters form a composite sketch of a candidate.
This dissertation theoretically and empirically examines how disability is negotiated and articul... more This dissertation theoretically and empirically examines how disability is negotiated and articulated in university texts and practices, refiguring the relationship of texts, bodies, and identity, and revealing how disability perspectives can usefully complicate and enrich language theory and analysis. In university settings, a refiguring such as the one I suggest means considering how rhetorical access complicates material access, and in the larger context of institutional discourse, my analysis points toward the embodied nature of all rhetorical positions. More broadly, I suggest reconsidering the pejorative positioning of disability in a culture that is constantly negotiating public and private scripts regarding acceptable bodies.
Using scholarship from rhetoric and composition, critical discourse analysis, and disability studies, Chapter One develops a theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing the rhetorical nature of disability. The project then considers a network of data, beginning with an analysis of 97 undergraduate admissions applications, which provides a broad view of the medicalized discursive relationship of disability and universities (Chapters Two and Three). Chapter Four considers the politics of disability disclosure by analyzing admissions essays by students with disabilities, and by plotting the distance between what rhetors seek to do, as explained in audiotaped interviews, and the texts they ultimately produce. Chapter Five concentrates on letters of recommendation, examining how graduate students are "outed" by faculty members' troubling attempts to "normalize" disability. Finally, Chapter Six focuses on how administrators, instructors, and medical authorities participate in the positioning of disability by analyzing a corpus of documents from a university disability office, as well as faculty and instructor responses to a survey regarding letters they receive from disability offices about students with disabilities. Overall, these various texts and practices form a discursive chain which begins with the student articulating her identity to the university, and ends with a letter written by university administrators and sent to instructors, revealing the literal and theoretical impact of university discourses on disability identity.
... In "Passion and Action: Reflections on Learning to Do Disability Studies in ... more ... In "Passion and Action: Reflections on Learning to Do Disability Studies in the Classroom and Beyond," Jennifer Paterson, Heather Willis, and Jessica Hogan ... We are also happy to include a visual art submission, produced by Carmen Caraballo and described by Julia Rodas. ...
Greetings from your new DSQ Reviews Editors, Amy Vidali and Margaret Price. We're excite... more Greetings from your new DSQ Reviews Editors, Amy Vidali and Margaret Price. We're excited to begin reviewing for DSQ, and we want to briefly share some of the innovations we plan to bring to the reviews section, and provide some basic guidelines for new and ...
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Using scholarship from rhetoric and composition, critical discourse analysis, and disability studies, Chapter One develops a theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing the rhetorical nature of disability. The project then considers a network of data, beginning with an analysis of 97 undergraduate admissions applications, which provides a broad view of the medicalized discursive relationship of disability and universities (Chapters Two and Three). Chapter Four considers the politics of disability disclosure by analyzing admissions essays by students with disabilities, and by plotting the distance between what rhetors seek to do, as explained in audiotaped interviews, and the texts they ultimately produce. Chapter Five concentrates on letters of recommendation, examining how graduate students are "outed" by faculty members' troubling attempts to "normalize" disability. Finally, Chapter Six focuses on how administrators, instructors, and medical authorities participate in the positioning of disability by analyzing a corpus of documents from a university disability office, as well as faculty and instructor responses to a survey regarding letters they receive from disability offices about students with disabilities. Overall, these various texts and practices form a discursive chain which begins with the student articulating her identity to the university, and ends with a letter written by university administrators and sent to instructors, revealing the literal and theoretical impact of university discourses on disability identity.
Using scholarship from rhetoric and composition, critical discourse analysis, and disability studies, Chapter One develops a theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing the rhetorical nature of disability. The project then considers a network of data, beginning with an analysis of 97 undergraduate admissions applications, which provides a broad view of the medicalized discursive relationship of disability and universities (Chapters Two and Three). Chapter Four considers the politics of disability disclosure by analyzing admissions essays by students with disabilities, and by plotting the distance between what rhetors seek to do, as explained in audiotaped interviews, and the texts they ultimately produce. Chapter Five concentrates on letters of recommendation, examining how graduate students are "outed" by faculty members' troubling attempts to "normalize" disability. Finally, Chapter Six focuses on how administrators, instructors, and medical authorities participate in the positioning of disability by analyzing a corpus of documents from a university disability office, as well as faculty and instructor responses to a survey regarding letters they receive from disability offices about students with disabilities. Overall, these various texts and practices form a discursive chain which begins with the student articulating her identity to the university, and ends with a letter written by university administrators and sent to instructors, revealing the literal and theoretical impact of university discourses on disability identity.