From the critique of ‘the medical model’ of disability undertaken during the early and mid-1990s, a ‘social model’ emerged, particularly in the caring professions and those trying to shape policy and practice for people with disability. In education and schooling, it was a period of cementing inclusive practices and the ‘integration’ and inclusion of disability into ‘mainstream’. What was lacking in the debates around the social model, however, were the challenges to abledness that were being grappled with in the routine and pragmatics of self-care by people with disabilities, their families, carers and caseworkers. Outside the academy, new forms of activity and new questions were circulating. Challenges to abledness flourished in the arts and constituted the lived experience of many disability activists. Disability Matters engages with the cultural politics of the body, exploring this fascinating and dynamic topic through the arts, teaching, research and varied encounters with ‘disability’ ranging from the very personal to the professional. Chapters in this collection are drawn from scholars responding in various registers and contexts to questions of disability, pedagogy, affect, sensation and education. Questions of embodiment, affect and disability are woven throughout these contributions, and the diverse ways in which these concepts appear emphasize both the utility of these ideas and the timeliness of their application. This book was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Authored by a legal specialist and an education professor, this study is targeted to everyone involved in the education of students with disabilities and provides a full examinatiaon of the legal issues. Each chapter blends classroom vignettes and teachable moments with relevant legal rights and responsibilities of all school personnel. Disability rights laws are an essential part of every classroom, not just special education classrooms. Laws providing rights and protections to students and teachers with disabilities will be limited in utility unless all teachers understand the laws and the roles of the laws in the classroom. As the number of lawsuits in education is on the rise, Teachers must learn about the numerous legal issues possible in order to protect themselves against becoming involved in court cases. Teacher preparation programs must prepare all teachers to deal with these issues and to be aware of legal requirements for an equal education. A legal mandate for an individual education plan, a less restrictive environment, and a free appropriate public education for students with disabilities are topics that all general education teachers must know and understand. This text is geared to all general education majors at all levels and in every content area, as well as administrators, teachers, parents of students with disabilities, and those involved in legal research.

This vital addition to carceral, prison, and disability studies draws important new links between deinstitutionalization and decarceration Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the twentieth century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system. Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration—antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex. Ben-Moshe discusses a range of topics, including why deinstitutionalization is often wrongly blamed for the rise in incarceration; who resists decarceration and deinstitutionalization, and the coalitions opposing such resistance; and how understanding deinstitutionalization as a form of residential integration makes visible intersections with racial desegregation. By connecting deinstitutionalization with prison abolition, Decarcerating Disability also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses, as well as tactics such as litigation, in securing freedom. Decarcerating Disability’s rich analysis of lived experience, history, and culture helps to chart a way out of a failing system of incarceration.

The Matter of Disability returns disability to its proper place as an ongoing historical process of corporeal, cognitive, and sensory mutation operating in a world of dynamic, even cataclysmic, change. The book’s contributors offer new theorizations of human and nonhuman embodiments and their complex evolutions in our global present, in essays that explore how disability might be imagined as participant in the “complex elaboration of difference,” rather than something gone awry in an otherwise stable process. This alternative approach to materiality sheds new light on the capacities that exist within the depictions of disability that the book examines, including Spider-Man, Of Mice and Men, and Bloodchild.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year for Nonfiction "...an essential and engaging look at recent disability history."— Buzzfeed One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human. A story of fighting to belong in a world that wasn’t built for all of us and of one woman’s activism—from the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco to inside the halls of Washington—Being Heumann recounts Judy Heumann’s lifelong battle to achieve respect, acceptance, and inclusion in society. Paralyzed from polio at eighteen months, Judy’s struggle for equality began early in life. From fighting to attend grade school after being described as a “fire hazard” to later winning a lawsuit against the New York City school system for denying her a teacher’s license because of her paralysis, Judy’s actions set a precedent that fundamentally improved rights for disabled people. As a young woman, Judy rolled her wheelchair through the doors of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in San Francisco as a leader of the Section 504 Sit-In, the longest takeover of a governmental building in US history. Working with a community of over 150 disabled activists and allies, Judy successfully pressured the Carter administration to implement protections for disabled peoples’ rights, sparking a national movement and leading to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Candid, intimate, and irreverent, Judy Heumann’s memoir about resistance to exclusion invites readers to imagine and make real a world in which we all belong.

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Activists can ask uncomfortable questions when they step back and examine their lives such as: “Will burnout destroy me as an effective advocate?" and, "How can I change the world when I’m too tired to change my socks?” We face messy, contradictory intersections where we must regain our balance and somehow take care of ourselves in the midst of struggling for a better world. Sustaining Spirit: Self-Care for Social Justice, Second Edition is a necessary companion during challenging times. "It's a must read..." - Adela Nieves, Traditional Health Practitioner, Taino (Indigenous Peoples of the Caribbean) We must speak out, take action, make a difference—yet can we remain passionate about a cause without being consumed by it? What habits can we cultivate to feel compassion for ourselves as well as others? Why does a willingness to self-nurture evoke such discomfort? Now the distinctive voice of social change activist Naomi Ortiz offers powerful, thoughtful, transformative insight into self-care. They weave personal experiences in class, race, and disability advocacy, into informative advice on dealing with the risks of burnout. Ortiz brings wisdom drawn from a deep connection to the Sonoran Desert to guide us to live more wholehearted lives. The power of belonging is a catalyst that resonates throughout these stories. Ortiz offers self-care techniques, tips, and tactics for those who would affect the world. Caring about the world should not burn us out. From interviews with social justice organizers involved in a variety of movements, as well as from their own activist efforts, Ortiz shows how to break the cycle of burnout. Sustaining Spirit shows us how to balance activism with self-care. A gorgeously moving and practical guide, each chapter ends with questions intended to lead the reader to self-awareness and the development of personalized tactics. This book is recommended for therapists, counselors, social workers, chaplains, educators, and people in related fields, in addition to the activists that it addresses itself to directly. Part guide and part workbook, readers will find support in these pages for their self-care journey. "Activists from every movement can gain strength from Sustaining Spirit." - Alice Wong, Founder, Disability Visibility Project(TM) Sustaining Spirit includes wisdom from over 30 leader interviewees, representing different organizing efforts, such as (at the time writing): adrienne maree brown (author of Emergent Strategy) Cristy Chung (Move to End Violence) Debra Erenberg (Amnesty International) Adam Maltby (social worker) Adi Afek (reproductive justice activist) Emma Fialka-Feldman (inclusion educator) Hillary Jorgensen (Colorado Progressive Coalition) Janice Felka, (author, What Matters: Reflections on Disability, Community and Love) Jennifer Thomas (Institute for Educational Leadership) Kellie Haigh (MSW, Disability activist) Kim Borowicz (Independent Living Research Utilization) Lisa Hoffman (international human rights activist) Melinda Haus (Justice Moves) Micah Fialka-Feldman (Through the Same Door) Rachel Scoggins (artist, educator) Rahnee Patrick (ADAPT and Access Living, Chicago) Rich Feldman (James and Grace Lee Boggs Center) Sarah Triano (Disability rights activist) "A guide book for activists and leaders in social justice movements." - Erin Blanding, WE.org