During a recent well-child check up, the nurse asked how much television my son watched. Although not common a generation […]
Women in Tech from ENIAC to MOM
On September 24, as I enjoyed my second coffee of the morning and caught up on news, a photo caught […]
On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough?: Interpreting Mental Illness
By Mary Elene Wood
A highway patrol officer straddles a woman who lies on her back by the side of a highway. His arm lifts high into the air, then, with what looks like substantial force, he strikes her in the face with his clenched fist. He does this over and over again. Early in July, news programs around the country quickly spread the story of a California Highway Patrol officer caught on videotape violently beating Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old homeless, presumably mentally ill, woman, along the side of a freeway in Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol claimed that the officer was only trying to stop the woman from walking out into traffic, yet journalists across the U.S. decried, in one writer’s words, “the lack of training given to law enforcement officers to handle such people, even though officers all too often are society’s frontline mental health care providers.”
Medicine, Modernity, and the Maternal Body
by Jodi Vandenberg-Daves
When I set out to write a synthesis of the history of motherhood in the U.S. back in 2008, I’d been teaching a course by that name for more than a decade. I didn’t anticipate that as I explored this history, I would soon witness a multi-faceted and partisan assault on reproductive rights. Perhaps this political context was part of the reason I found that, as I dug ever deeper into this scholarship, questions about the modernization of the maternal body and the various political tensions embedded within this process kept bubbling to the surface.
George Washington’s Bodies
Many Americans could tell you that George Washington was tall and that he had false teeth. Why? Although he is […]
The Paralympics, Past and Present
I probably don’t need to tell you that the 2014 Winter Olympics captured the attention of millions of people in the […]
Disability, Responsibility, and the Veteran Pension Paradox
By Guest Author
Recently, NPR reporter Quil Lawrence presented a radio series in which he profiled veterans who received other-than-honorable discharges from the military after violating rules of conduct, breaking the law, or getting in trouble with military authorities. Despite their service – including, for many, tours in active warzones – soldiers with so-called ‘bad paper’ are no longer considered veterans. As former Marine Michael Hartnett put it: “You might as well never even enlisted.”[1] Hartnett was given bad paper in 1993 when he began abusing drugs and alcohol – an attempt to self-medicate his undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder. Veterans like Hartnett are no longer eligible to receive any of the veterans’ benefits they were promised when they enlisted.
Oh Christmas Tree
The presents are open. The stockings are empty. The leftovers are gone. A new year is almost upon us and many […]
Sex and Disability, Part 2
By Adam Turner
This is the second post in a two-part reflection on some of the issues raised by a September BBC news story, Judge Approves Man’s Sterilisation in Legal First. (See part one for a synopsis of the story.) In part one I listed three reasons why people often believe adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) should not have sex or sometimes even be in romantic relationships. I discussed number one in part one, and will now look at numbers two and three.
She Works Hard for the Money
It is officially summer in Madison. The air is moist, the boats are out, and I, like many other graduate […]