New Issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies

Fri Sep 13 14:45:37 EDT 2013

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Please share!
A new issue of The Canadian Journal of Disability Studies is now live.

http://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/issue/current

If you have a few minutes this weekend, please have a look at the first article in the issue, Kate Rossiter and Annalise Clarkson's "Opening Ontario’s “Saddest Chapter”: A Social History of Huronia Regional Centre." This article acts as a great primer for the historic class action lawsuit beginning this coming Monday in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Then, come back and read the other excellent articles in the issue as well, including:

Disability and Poverty: Stories that Resist Attitudinal Barriers to Inclusion
Randy Johner

Reflections on Personhood: Girls with Severe Disabilities and the Law
Sheila K. Jennings

Buying time: The S/pace of Advocacy and the Cultural Production of Autism
Anne E. McGuire

Commentary: When Bureaucracy and Policy Leave Ethics Behind: Our Nineteen-Day Battle with Alberta Health Services to Save Our (Independent) Lives
Heidi Janz

Review of Disability Politics & Theory by A.J. Withers
Jaime R. Brenes Reyes

As always, the CJDS is free, open access, and accessible.

Jay

Jay Dolmage, Ph.D
Editor, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies
Associate Professor of English
University of Waterloo
Department of English
Hagey Hall of Humanities Building
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519 888 4567 x31035
Fax: 519 746 5788
dolmage at uwaterloo.ca
________________________________
From: Katherine Acheson
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 8:11 AM
To: Shelley Hulan
Cc: Randy Harris; Jay Dolmage; englchr Easton; englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca
Subject: Re: draft strategic plan update : The Literature of Aging

While we're thinking so imaginatively, maybe we can add that much of what we do as teachers and researchers is document novelty and analyze innovation (in literature, in rhetoric, in communication technology). We also produce original materials, whether in writing or in other forms. I think Waterloo's understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship could be deeply enriched by what we bring to them.

Kathy

Katherine Acheson, PhD

On 2013-09-12, at 10:29 PM, "Shelley Hulan" <shulan at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:shulan at uwaterloo.ca>> wrote:

Colleagues,

I think that these are all great ideas and would add that, in fact, it would not be difficult to fit ourselves in with the "water" focus. We are a stone's throw from the Great Lakes, and with the existing expertise in the department we could easily develop courses on the literature of the Great Lakes that would range from (among others) some of the earliest Ojibwa writing to Alice Munro's short fiction and memoirs. I would also add that as a member of the Board of Governors I've had the opportunity to hear plenty of discussion about the strategic plan. One thing about all three foci is that they are broad, and that's not an accident. I'm no fan of differentiation, but the rubric we have now is as capacious it can be and still go by that name. There is a sense that with these three foci, people will be free to investigate them creatively, looking at every possible facet of them. Yes it means that we have to make a case for everything we want, and line it up with the strategic plan, but when has that not been the case in the past ten years?The university has always had priorities, and we have always had to fit into them. With these three foci, I think we're actually in excellent shape. So buck up, Fraser! Stop feeling existential dread! And thanks for your work on our strategic plan!

Shelley
________________________________
From: englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca> [englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca>] on behalf of Randy Allen Harris [raha at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:raha at uwaterloo.ca>]
Sent: September 12, 2013 9:04 PM
To: Jay Dolmage
Cc: englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca>; englchr Easton
Subject: Re: draft strategic plan update : The Literature of Aging

I will add to this stream (Thanks, John! Great idea!) that cognitive rhetoric and (especially) cognitive poetics have significant implications for the psychology of aging and for remediating or cutting through some of the deficits that can come with aging. Rhythm, schemes, and maybe some tropes, all build very resilient neural pathways, and many figures add a signal-robustness to language that can help communication with aphasics. Anecdotally now, my father was almost totally befogged by dementia, but just two months before his death I read him "The Charge of the Light Brigade" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee," poems that he had memorized as a child, and he followed them intently. He even, to everyone's astonishment, read a few continuous pages from "Cremation" on his own.  best, --randy

On Sep 12, 2013, at 8:35 PM, Jay Dolmage <dolmage at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:dolmage at uwaterloo.ca>> wrote:

Dear Colleagues:

I would just add (as you would all likely assume) that there are myriad overlaps between the study of aging and disability studies.

I would also add a perhaps-connected, perhaps-not-connected thought.  I've always felt that something like Canterbury Elder College is  both really intriguing and really promising for the Waterloo region, which has an aging population.  There is a newly-proposed seniors complex in Waterloo, out by the Stork YMCA, where seniors will live and also have access to cutting-edge care; in return Waterloo and McMaster researchers will have access to this population.  I'd love to teach something like a life-writing class in a place like this (I'm sure others would too). What if we started thinking of potential English majors of all ages?

Jay

Jay Dolmage, Ph.D
Editor, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies
Associate Professor of English
University of Waterloo
Department of English
Hagey Hall of Humanities Building
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519 888 4567 x31035
Fax: 519 746 5788
dolmage at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:dolmage at uwaterloo.ca>
________________________________________
From: englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca> [englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca>] on behalf of Kenneth Graham [k2graham at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:k2graham at uwaterloo.ca>]
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2013 8:19 PM
To: khirschk at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:khirschk at uwaterloo.ca>; Marcel O'Gorman
Cc: englchr Easton; englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: RE: draft strategic plan update : The Literature of Aging

Hi Everyone:

Aging is certainly the most promising of the three UW research priorities for an English Department.  In addition to what has been mentioned, there was a report on the PBS Newshour tonight on the Alzheimer's Poetry Project (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2013/09/where-poetry-lives.html; http://www.alzpoetry.com/).  A former colleague of mine had spent twenty years teaching creative writing to seniors, and there's our student Lindsay Kroes's collection of stories gathered from Stratford seniors (http://uwaterloo.ca/history/news/new-history-book-waterloo-student-lindsay-kroes).  So there are lots of possibilities here, and we should think about them.  As always, we need to ask ourselves not only what is possible, but also whether particular options are things we want to do, or just things that seem like they might bring funding support.

Cheers,
Ken

________________________________________
From: englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca> [englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca>] on behalf of khirschk at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:khirschk at uwaterloo.ca> [khirschk at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:khirschk at uwaterloo.ca>]
Sent: September 12, 2013 12:25 PM
To: Marcel O'Gorman
Cc: englchr Easton; englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: Re: draft strategic plan update : The Literature of Aging

Dear all

I have, believe it or not, supervised a PhD thesis on literature and
critical gerontology (yes, of course, there is such a thing, and yes,
it involves Habermas - and not just because he is getting longer in
the tooth).

best

Ken

 Quoting Marcel O'Gorman <marcel at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:marcel at uwaterloo.ca>>:

I think this is a great idea. I have volunteers coming to my
memory/techne course who will be discussing their
Alzheimer's-related dementia. I would be willing to organize a unit
or lesson on memory and aging. I teach two novels in my class on
this very topic.
m.
On 2013-09-12, at 11:22 AM, John North wrote:

Would courses on Aging at the 100, 300/400 and grad levels help? We
might argue that Literature presents the process of aging from
youth to old age.  Many sample texts come to mind:  Milton's Samson
and Shakespeare's Lear and Leontes/Hermione (The Tempest) for
example--but hundreds could be found--Tennyson's Ulysses and
Arthur, Wordsworth's "The child is father of the man", Coleridge's
Ancient Mariner, Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good
Night," the Bronte novels, even and especially Dante, Eliot's "The
Journey of the Magi"

(All this was a long time ago, I remember,/ ...but set down/ This,
set down/ This: were  we lead all that way for / Birth or death?...
this Birth was/ Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our
death. / ...We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,/ But no
longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/ With an alien people
clutching their gods./ I should be glad of another death.)

We could even produce some oldsters to teach such courses! and set
up the courses as a sub-specialty to be recorded on student
transcripts.

By the way in my current 451A Victorian Poetry class only one
student has read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", which is
arguably the greatest of the Romantic poems.

John

On 2013-09-12, at 8:17 AM, Heather Smyth wrote:

Thank you for this, Fraser. You've put a lot of work into this
plan on behalf of the rest of us and it looks like it's addressing
the main visions that we have for our department and also
presenting a clear 'face' to the audiences that will read this.

It's worth remembering that its primary goal is strategic and
focused on the long-term health of the department within the
university, so your proposed editorial changes re PW, digital
Romanticism, experiential learning etc make sense to me as things
to bring to the forefront, so that we can secure our research and
teaching in all the myriad areas that matter to us.

Cheers,
Heather

________________________________________
From: englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca>
[englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac-bounces at artsservices.uwaterloo.ca>] on behalf of Fraser
Easton [englishchair at uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englishchair at uwaterloo.ca>]
Sent: September 12, 2013 2:44 AM
To: englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca<mailto:englfac at watarts.uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: draft strategic plan update

Dear Colleagues--

I hope you are all having a good first week of the Fall term.

This is a brief update on our strategic planning exercise, for those
of you who are interested.  The current intention is still to bring a
revised version of the document for approval to the Department meeting
at the end of the month.

1. I have received no public or private requests for an additional
meeting on our draft strategic plan outline.  I asked you to let me
know if we should do this due to any serious concerns you might have
about the draft plan.  Since I am aware of no serious concerns, no
additional special meeting will be called.

2. Comments that I have received from you are overwhelmingly positive
about the document, and mostly have small, good suggestions for
emendation (e.g. Aimee's metaphr consistency suggestion) which I will
incorporate as much as possible in a final draft.

3. The CRC in cognitive rhetoric was challenged on a couple of fronts:
why that area of rhetoric, why rhetoric, why rhetorical theory, etc.
I will emend the current language slightly to keep us from being boxed
in here, but to all who have questions: this came up as a good idea at
the voluntary department meeting on strategic planning.  And it needs
to be stressed that rhetoric, if not rhetorical theory, is the ground
of our Department's distinctiveness.  We have to be strong there.  (Of
course, we can be strong elsewhere, too, and we are, and that is good.
Further, our strength in integration points between lit and rhet is
our highest order strength.  But it all comes back, in the end, to a
strong RPW presence.)

4. Sidebar: I am going to go out on a limb here, but based on Neil's
comments in our email threads and on other conversations I have been
having with many of you, we need to freshen our tech writing (PW, PC)
identity, and I may try to sneak a reference to this into the final
version.

5. Back to main thread: As some of you will know, the Board of
Governer's has just recently approved the University's new strategic
plan.  The plan has identified three key goals for the next few years:
entrepreneurship, experiential learning, and research as critical.
Before any of us get excited about a "research intensification" agenda
by the University, I should note that it is stated that all new
research funding will go to the following three areas exclusively:
quantum, water, and aging.

Although I feel existential dread descending on me right about now, I
will attempt to hook the document that has already been developed onto
these themes.  Some are easy (experiential = co-op PhD).  Others
(quantum anybody?) may be harder.

6. Finally, in our continuing search for permission to hire a
Romanticist, I have reason to believe that a digital Romanticist may
hit the mark better, and so will pair that with our digital
Shakespearean.

Thank you for your patience with all of this.

Best, Fraser

Fraser Easton
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of English Language and Literature
University of Waterloo

519-888-4567  ext. 33359

--
Professor Marcel O'Gorman, PhD
Director, Critical Media Lab
Department of English
University of Waterloo
Hagey Hall
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
Tel: 519 888 4567 x32946
Fax: 519 746 5788
http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca
http://marcelogorman.net

---------<>---------
Randy Allen Harris
Linguistics, rhetoric, and communication design
Department of English, University of Waterloo
Waterloo ON Canada N2L 3G1
HH247, x35362

www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~raha<http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~raha>
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