The University of Toronto Equity Studies Department is in
the beginning stages of developing a comprehensive Disability Studies
program, currently consisting of only a handful of courses. To both gauge and bolster
interest in the program, the department is hosting a series of lectures
and seminars, the first of which took place on November 3 in the
Women’s and Gender Studies lounge at 40 Willcocks
Street, a New College residence and
office building.
The seminar was chaired by Equity Studies
program coordinator Professor June Larkin and featured talks from three
prominent U of T scholars in fields of disability studies and human
rights. While ample seats
and food were provided, the seminar quickly became standing room only
and people were packed onto the floor. Professor Larkin was clearly
surprised at the turnout, and indicated that the seminars would be
upgraded to larger venues in the future to accommodate the obvious
interest in furthering the program.
While there were clearly more people
than expected in attendance, the seminar retained its personal focus;
the speakers asked that each audience member introduce him/herself and
announce his/her affiliation.
The first speaker was Nouman Ashraf, the
Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Officer for the University of Toronto. Ashraf
spoke of the recent upset at Gollaudet University, where a
hearing President was hired to lead the deaf university. While this was the focus of his
talk, he managed to ally this case study with the larger challenge of
making the disability movement more accessible. He discussed the double burden
of being a student with a disability: he/she not only has an impairment, but must also advocate for access and
thus accept the onus of responsibility for any notable change.
While addressing the issue of the
disenfranchisement of the disabled student population, Ashraf urged the audience to consider “a
model of accommodation becoming a model of engagement.” The struggle to bring the
identity of the disabled student to the academic forefront is of chief
importance in the disabled student’s movement. He suggested three
major ways to accomplish this: 1) all of us have a responsibility to
make the needs of the disabled community apparent; 2) we must develop
and overlap pedagogy and curriculum so that this mission might be
better accomplished; and 3) we must acknowledge and build a culture for
multiple intersections of identity. Those who experience such
categorization should be the ones who criticize its implementation,
instead of such analysis coming from “the top.”
Rod Michalko,
the second speaker, will be joining the U of T faculty for Disability
Studies in the summer of 2007.
He is the author of three books discussing various aspects of
disability and our social culture.
His talk focused on his current project, which conceives of
Disability Studies in terms of “trouble”: disability is a
trouble which inherently seeks a solution. Under this discourse of
thought, Michalko stated that disability
seeks its own solution as individuals become the embodiment of
disability and are thus encouraged to understand themselves as required
to embark on a path of self-solution. Michalko
likened this tangled image to “a Gordian knot,” which is
often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem.
Similarly, Michalko
discussed how programs implemented with the intention of benefiting
individuals with disabilities are inherently “trouble,” as
they implement the search for “normalcy” and
“ordinariness” as “the background of any form of
individual or collective life.” Basically, the disabled life is essentialised to be a problematic part of the
so-called “normal” life. Michalko
closed his talk by asking the audience to “imagine a world where
we don’t see disability as a problem needing to be solved.” This alternate way of being, to
the normative world, presents as overtly troublesome due to the current
social framework.
The final speaker at the event was Tanya
Titchkosky, who is a professor with OISE U/T
in the Sociology and Equity Studies departments. Her presentation was unique in
that she read a narrative inquiry piece detailing her own experience
with disability:
“Something is wrong. I go back to the woman. I am getting afraid of not
having her in sight since I know that she knows where everything
is… I do not.
‘Please,’ I say to her and tears begin to well
up. Then I say it…
‘Please come help me, I am dyslexic and I’m
lost’” (Titchkosky 3).
This is the story of a woman struggling
to get along in a world where she is often perceived in a way that
differs from her actual self.
This speaks to the notions that Nouman
Ashraf discussed about who actually
categorizes individuals, which is in many (if not all) cases not the
individual him/herself.
Titchkosky presented not
only the story of a need, but of a quest to find identity and to
negotiate placement in a world and society which does not often
recognize the struggle of the disabled individual. “Yes,” Titchkosky stated, “I’d like to be
normal, but what relationship to normality is that which isn’t
already thinking about it?”
By definition, if one is to be normal, then one can never
actually consider the placement of normalcy in his/her life. In doing
so, he/she is immediately cast as abnormal.
Both the seminar and Titchkosky’s
narrative were eloquently and appropriately framed and closed with an
East African fable told by Nouman Ashraf:
A lion cub turns
to his father and asks “Father, is the lion the king of the
jungle?” The father lion replies to his son with “of course
the lion is the king of the jungle.” The lion cub then poses a
second question to his father: “Then why do all of the stories
about the jungle end with the hunter killing the lion?” The father lion replies
“the stories will always end that way, until the lion learns to
write.”
Further Disability Studies workshops include:
Universal Design
Workshop - January 31,
2007 – 3:00pm –
5:00pm
What’s up
with Disability Studies? - March
30, 2007 – 3:00pm –
5:00pm
