SESSION TITLE
Dis-ability dialogues: Engaging schools, communities, and families

ORGANIZER Juliette de Wolfe; Teachers College; jld2158@columbia.edu

WORKING ABSTRACT

In the session, Dis-ability dialogues: Engaging schools, communities, and families, the papers will focus on how disability is situated, defined, and contested in school, community, and family settings. Specifically, the papers in this session will focus on practices that index multiple meanings of disability as well as the shifting identities of individuals with disabilities and their families.
Disability informs a variety of schooling structures and is enacted in myriad ways in buildings and classrooms. This session may explore how the label of disability is used in schooling contexts, with what results, and for what purposes. It also may explore the impact of identity formation for those labeled, as well as the impact on individuals who work, live, and otherwise interact with them.
In communities, disability may be visible in the workplace, at the supermarket, or in many other social contexts. This session may probe the interpretations of disability within these contexts, and attempt to tease out when disability matters, where and for whom it becomes a problem, as well as possible solutions for effective conversations about the place of disability in community settings.
Within families, disability may be differentially interpreted by individual members. It may alter the way that a family operates its daily routines and/or how it identifies itself as a family of a person with a disability. This session may investigate the place of disability in the family and how individuals use, accept, or contest disability labels within various social contexts.
While disability is situated, defined, and contested within school, community, and family settings, it is also found at the interstices between these settings and in transitions through daily living spaces. The connection between these spaces will be highlighted in this session. Additionally, the session may interrogate the work of institutions, organizations, and systems that define disability, and how these systems may be navigated, manipulated, and employed to obtain supports needed for the everyday management of disability. With these overlapping fields in mind, the session will also focus on services and resources for individuals labeled as disabled as well as those who provide care and support for them.

INTERESTED?
If you would like to participate in this session, please send your name, contact information, paper title and abstract to Juliette at jld2158@columbia.edu BY MARCH 31, 2011.