by Brian Bergen-Aurand Following last week’s murder of five journalists at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, several more states have passed or are seriously considering passing “red flag laws” or Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs). Such laws allow police officers, family members, and domestic or intimate partners to petition courts to temporarily remove firearms […] … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Disablity
Five Disability Memoirs for 2018
by Brian Bergen-Aurand I’m stretching the boundaries a bit with this list, mentioning some books that brush up against or intrude upon our usual definitions of disability in order to broaden and disturb our conceptions of what disability memoirs and crip lit might exclude. (Synopses from Goodreads.) 1. A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True … Continue reading
“I am not sure it is mine.”–Notes on Writing in Helen Keller’s THE STORY OF MY LIFE
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Almost halfway through Helen Keller’s The Story of my Life, which first appeared in installments in Ladies’ Home Journal throughout 1902, is a chapter recalling what Keller labels “the one cloud in my childhood’s bright sky.” Chapter 14 tells the tale of the author’s first adventure in writing–her composition at the age … Continue reading
Fifteen Disability Memoirs: A Chronological List
by Brian Bergen-Aurand The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (1903) Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic (1976) The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde (1980) The Me in the Mirror by Connie Panzarino (1994) The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait by Frida Kahlo and Carlos Fuentes (1995) Gary … Continue reading
Reckoning–13/20 March 2017
13/20 March 2017 Morning En Route to the Hospital Snow wafts off the little lake along route 66, momentarily encasing the car in a trance of glitter Live with your puny, vulnerable self Live with her ~Maggie Nelson, Something Bright, Then Holes The past two weeks have been consumed with close readings of several articles … Continue reading
Reckoning–27 February 2017
27 February 2017 After a weekend spent revamping the Foreign Influence website, I am ready to return to some projects put on hold at the end of 2016. Four topics in particular continue to hold my attention–Crip Theory and the development of a curriculum for Disability Studies, the ongoing search for the best ways to … Continue reading
Disability Rights on Trial: What’s Really At Stake in the Stubblefield Case?
Preserving the Heritage of Blindness
by Brian Bergen-Aurand One of the accepted modern understandings of dis/ability is as a lack or shortcoming to be overcome. Being dis/abled is associated with loss, vulnerability, and dependence. Something to be avoided, especially because of its “nature” as less than normal. Rarely, if ever, has deaf culture, blind culture, dis/abled culture been thought of … Continue reading
The Prosthetics of Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp
by Brian Bergen-Aurand Prosthesis: Noun. Originally from a grammatical concept “prosthetics,” from the 1550s, “addition of a letter or syllable to a word,” from Late Latin, from Greek prosthesis “addition, application, attachment,” from prostithenai “add to,” from pros “to” + tithenai “to put, place, to set down as in a proposition.” Prosthesis in reference to … Continue reading
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