Steaming, Compressed Air

This essay, composed over a span of eight months, was developed through a collaboration meant to redefine notions of writing that excludes people with disabilities. As post-colonial/collaborative composition theory suggests (Davies, 1992), the author and the writer of the narrative are two distinct people. While the author constructed the words verbally through a series of ongoing dialogues, the writer transcribed, edited, and re-ordered the text. Douglas Biklen’s book, Communication Unbound (1993), inspired us to explore these non-traditional ways of “writing” that, while grounded in conversation and collaboration, also disrupt models of efficiency and individualism

"What Has Become of Jimmy Thornton?": The Rhetoric(s) of Letter-Writing at The New York State Asylum for Idiots, 1855-1866

This article looks to the genre of letter-writing and to epistolary rhetoric in order to recover perspectives seemingly lost amongst the medicalized discourse of asylum histories. These hard-to-find letters written in the nineteenth century by pupils, family members, and teachers open us up to new perspectives not available in other archival documents. I give a brief introduction to the history and theory of epistolary rhetoric, delimit a disability epistolary, and then consider a group of letters in terms of the rhetorical action they perform. I conclude by emphasizing the significance of this cross-disciplinary work for both rhetoric and disability studies

Review of Craton, The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Difference in 19th-Century Fiction

No abstract availabl

Review of Petra Kuppers, Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art

No abstract availabl

Race, Apology, and Public Memory at Maryland's Hospital for the 'Negro' Insane

To respond to a recent demand of the ACLU of Maryland, and to augment theories from Disability Incarcerated (2014) about the convergence of race, disability, and due process (or lack thereof), this essay analyzes the extent to which racism informed the creation of Maryland's Hospital for the 'Negro' Insane (Crownsville Hospital). In order to understand the extent of racism in Crownsville's earlier years, I will take into account 14 categories within conditions of confinement from 1921-1928 and compare them to the nearby, white asylum. Ultimately, the hospital joins the ranks of separate and unequal (Plessy vs. Ferguson) institutions founded alongside a rhetoric of fear that the Baltimore Sun daily paper deemed "a Black invasion" of the city of Baltimore. Even more, I add to public memory of this racialized space invoking the rhetorical frame, as Kendall Phillips advises, of responsibility and apology (versus absolution) within the context of present-day racial justice movements

\u27Friction in Our Machinery:\u27 Rhetorical Education at the New York State Asylum at Syracuse, 1854-1884

Allied with studies of histories of rhetorical education of marginalized groups (A. Cobb, J. Enoch, D. Gold, S.W. Logan, J.J. Royster), this dissertation fills in gaps in rhetorical history by showing how the curriculum and practices within the first thirty years at the New York State Asylum-School at Syracuse (1854-1884) utilized principles of rhetoric. I retrieve remnants from the archives of this asylum-school in order to construct a social history of rhetoric that extends our considerations of diverse populations in non-traditional educational settings. While contemporary notions of an asylum reverberate more with confinement tactics than with educational practices, the New York State Asylum-School at Syracuse or what was also known as the New York State Asylum for Idiots was in fact a school that was imagined within the movement towards universal education. Today, the institution is memorialized as the first public school for people considered feeble-minded or idiotic. Rhetorical training at the school, however, did not manifest in democratic decision-making in the public sphere. It did not mean that people gained the right to vote, were trained in how to profess opinions or to persuade in terms of political belief. Rather, training consisted of a bending of the will towards somatic and mental normalcy that ideally resulted in a controllable and exploitable unit of labor. However, while vocational participation was foregrounded in the asylum-school over participation in public deliberation or rhetorical uses of language, pupils were able to expand their life options regardless as to how limited those options may have been. By utilizing archival documents like case studies, annual reports, patient and family letters, and other institutional and governmental texts, I reconstruct the rhetorical practices and, most importantly, contend that when we think of a nineteenth century asylum-school we must conceive of disability and divergent embodiments as complex, historically situated social and rhetorical constructions. I extend previous definitions of rhetorical education by conceiving of it as formal or informal, self-taught or teacher-imposed educational training that develops moral, physical, intellectual/mental,, and vocational aspects of a person. Decidedly, an examination of rhetorical education at the asylum-school calls into question many of our assumptions about embodied differences as they relate to pedagogy and public participation

Using disability theory to change disability services: A case study in student activism.

In 2001, a group of student activists at Syracuse University started an organization called the Beyond Compliance Coordinating Committee (BCCC). The BCCC activists used disability studies theory to engage the campus in conversations about disability and inform significant change in the way Syracuse administration think about disability. This paper explores what makes Syracuse unique and what happened between 2001 and the present day. It concludes with recommendations for disability services providers on how they can use the experience at Syracuse to inform their thinking about campus culture and services