Compared to the massive life and death issues people are facing, this is a tiny thing, for a tiny segment of the world. But with that caveat, it is still worth saying. In 2009, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive version of papillary thyroid cancer. I had to bail on my courses, and lost […]
Category Archives: Disability
November is Binge Writing Month
..and I don’t actually need to binge write. I need to finish. I have no idea why people pick November for this, but there are NaNoWriMo and NationalThesisWritingMonth and AnyGoodThing. All of these wonderful initiatives seem to be good for writers and help them solve problems. Unfortunately, they don’t solve problems that I have as […]
I’m sorry, but this is another post that connects our cats and my research interests
So it turns out that Tako is blind. We knew something wasn’t right, as sometimes she wouldn’t respond to toys waved in front of her nose, and she would come tearing around the corner in the bedroom and run right into the legs of one of the dressers with the cutest little [thump] sound. Since […]
McGill Disability Awareness Week 12-16 March 2012
Perhaps it’s always been this way, but from my perspective it seems that the Office for Students with Disabilities at McGill has been expanding their mandate in productive ways. Where I used to think of them as a part of student services (which they most emphatically still are), they are getting more involved in promoting […]
Disability Theory Quote of the Day
“Constructing the axis on which disabled and nondisabled fall will be a critical step in marking all points along it.” –Simi Linton, “Reassigning Meaning,” in Lennard J. Davis, ed, The Disability Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2010), 235 (originally in Simi Linton, Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity (NYU Press, 1998)). Today’s seminar topic was identity […]
Speech Impairment: in the news, in the booth, at some parties, and in situ
Yesterday’s New York Times had a story on sports figures with temporary vocal cord paralysis–announcers Joe Buck and Dick Vitale, and referee Mike Pereira. The piece more or less exactly describes my own difficulties. Here’s Pereira talking about himself and Buck: “You have to reach more into your diaphragm to get the vocal cords to […]