Follow the links by each discussion date below, to see materials used for past discussions.

Year 3: Dis/Representation: Evolving Disability Conversations

November 16, 2016 – Diversity versus Equity

Presented by Leila Haile.  A presentation and discussion about how to approach Social Justice and equity in our workplaces, schools and other institutions in a way that honors our identities and asks us to reach deep to unpack our own bias so we can create environments where people can be their full selves.

October 19, 2016 – Disability Culture and Justice

  • Overview of DACP our philosophy and programs
  • Why is Disability Culture important to our communities?
  • People of color with disabilities changing the movement: Disability Justice: access, interdependence, intersections of Identities and liberation
  • Questions and discussion: What’s important for East Portland’s Disability Community?

Year 2: Dis/Representation: Evolving Disability Conversations

April 2, 2014 – Fertility and Parenting with a Disability

From the forced sterilization and eugenics practices of the past to modern stereotypes regarding who can and should parent, this session will explore what it means to reproduce through a disabled body.

December 4, 2014 – Technology to Empower

We live in a world in which rapidly evolving tools and techniques are connecting and empowering individuals with disabilities in ways that have not been possible in the past. This session will look at how technology such as 3D printing and eye gaze software are breaking down barriers around the world.

January 8, 2015 – Disability,  Sexuality, and Gender

Identity development is a complex process. This session will examine the intersections of disability with sexuality and gender.

February 5, 2015 – Race and Disability

Issues of race and disability are powerful reminders of how visible differences can act as rationale for marginalization.

March 5, 2015 – Disability Activism and the 25th Anniversary of the ADA

“Nothing about us without us”  has become a rallying cry within the disability rights movement. In this session, we will explore efforts to get laws passed as well as the real world impact those efforts can have.

May 7, 2015 – Global Perspectives on Disability

This session will explore differences in how disability is experienced and understood in cultures around the world.


Year 1: Dis/Representation: Reading into Disability

May 2013 

Nonfiction:

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “Making space accessible is an act of love for our communities” http://creatingcollectiveaccess.wordpress.com/making-space-accessible-is-an-act-of-love-for-our-communities/

Mia Mingus, “Changing the framework: Disability justice: How our communities can move beyond access to wholeness” http://www.resistinc.org/newsletters/articles/changing-framework-disability-justice

Dawn Atkins & Cathy Marston (1999). “Creating accessible Queer community: Intersections and fractures with Dis/Ability Praxis” in Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity 4 (1). Available online: http://www.dawnatkins.org/qdintro.htm

Emi Koyama, “From ‘Intersex’ to ‘DSD’: Toward a Queer Disability Politics of Gender” http://www.intersexinitiative.org/articles/intersextodsd.html

Fiction/Poetry:

Nicola Griffith, “Song of bullfrogs, cry of geese” http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/song-of-bullfrogs-cry-of-geese/

Sherman Alexie, The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian

June 2013

Nonfiction:

Cal Montgomery, “Harry Potter and Separatism” from A Ragged Edge Online: http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/potter0604.html

Renee Martin at Womanist Musings, “You’re cured now right” http://www.womanist-musings.com/2012/02/youre-cured-now-right.html

Garland-Thomson, “Staring at the other,” Disability Studies Quarterly 2005 v. 25 no. 4, http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/610/787

Hel, Black Broken & Bent, “What’s apparent?” http://blackbrokenandbent.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/whats-apparent/

Building Radical Accessible Communities Everywhere, “Inspiration Porn” http://buildingradicalaccessiblecommunities.blogspot.com/2012/02/inspiration-porn.html?zx=39542697836e416b

Fiction/Poetry:

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden is widely available in libraries and bookstores. The text is also available for free on Project Gutenberg. You can also read a copy for free in several accessible formats at the Internet Archive and there is a free audiobook available on Librivox, read by a human.

Chris Hewitt, Four Poems in Bent: http://www.bentvoices.org/bentvoices/hewitt_fourpoems.htm

July 2013

Nonfiction:

Hel, “Universal design as anti-racism” on Black, Broken & Bent:
 http://blackbrokenandbent.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/universal-design-as-anti-racism/

Harriet McBryde Johnson, “Unspeakable Conversations” (NY Times 2003):
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/magazine/unspeakable-conversations.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

s.e. smith, “Getting some nuance up in your reproductive rights” from Tiger Beatdown,
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/05/10/getting-some-nuance-up-in-your-reproductive-rights/

Fiction/Poetry:

Lois McMaster Bujold “The mountains of mourning” in Borders of Infinity (collected in omnibus Young Miles)
Available as an e-book here: http://www.baenebooks.com/p-622-the-mountains-of-mourning.aspx
Also full text is posted here: http://www.e-reading-lib.org/bookreader.php/70877/Bujold_05_The_Mountains_of_Mourning.html

Neil Marcus, poem: “Disabled Country”
http://walkingisoverrated.com/2009/01/22/disabled-country-poem-by-neil-marcus/

August 2013

Nonfiction:

Cripwheels, “Living on Edge” (conversation with Mia Mingus)
http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/2011/07/living-on-edge.html

Sunny Taylor, “The right not to work: Power and disability”
http://monthlyreview.org/2004/03/01/the-right-not-to-work-power-and-disability

Billie Rain, “Class, disability, and social Darwinism”Renee Martin at Womanist Musings, “What counts as a disability?”
https://www.facebook.com/notes/billie-rain/class-disability-and-social-darwinism/10151486373650499http://www.womanist-musings.com/2010/02/what-counts-as-disability.html

Renee Martin at Womanist Musings, “What counts as a disability?”
http://www.womanist-musings.com/2010/02/what-counts-as-disability.html

Anna Mollow, “When Black Women Start Going on Prozac”
Available through jstor and reprinted here: http://kitsunemonster.livejournal.com/3275.html

Fiction/Poetry:

Toni Morrison, Home

September 2013

Nonfiction:

Sontag Illness as Metaphor/AIDS and its metaphors

Fiction/Poetry

Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals

Flannery O’Connor, short story, “The lame shall enter first.” (available on JSTOR)

October 2013

Nonfiction:

Schweik, Susan (Winter 2011) “Kicked to the curb: Ugly law then and now.”

In Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 46 (1), available online at http://harvardcrcl.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Schweik_Vol46_Amicus.pdf
(Has 2 poems by Art Honeyman (Portland Disability Activist and Artist) in the text, talks about a the Portland context)

Ruth Hubbard, “Who should and who should not inhabit the world,” in The Disability Studies Reader
Almost all available here: http://books.google.com/books?id=Oor7avo2iDkC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=hubbard+who+should+and+who+should+not+inhabit+the+world&source=bl&ots=o-9GV7bzrS&sig=XGGTq0TyBAkHMEXw2euXjA4VrdM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3m92Uf7GPOqqiAK1IGQAg&ved=0CFIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=hubbard%20who%20should%20and%20who%20should%20not%20inhabit%20the%20world&f=false

Louise Norlie, “Reading between the lines” from A Ragged Edge Online (3/23/2006):
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/departments/fiction/000851.html

Fiction/Poetry:

Susan Nussbaum, “Good Kings Bad Kings”