Pasquale S. Toscano // Madness is therefore defined to be a vehement dotage, or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy, full of anger and clamour, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness…
Category: Disability
‘Laughing At’: The Exploitation of Disability as Comedic Entertainment in Pre-Industrial Europe
James Belarde // “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.” –Nathaniel Lee, 17th century dramatist, after being committed to Bethlem Hospital In late June 1340, the members of the French royal court found themselves in a tricky situation. France’s navy had just been decimated in the Battle…
Little House in the Hood: Save the Bees, call me Mel
Mel Maldonado-Salcedo // What’s in a Name? I was born in the 1980s, an era filled with excess. Perhaps this is the reason I have always struggled with moderation. My generation was defined by drugs, MTV, and Melissas. From grade school to high school, I was one of a few Melissas in each classroom. For this…
“Novum Corpus, Pristina Mens”: Pandemic Forms of Weight Loss, or an Apology in Seven Cantos
Pasquale S. Toscano // Dat sparso capiti vivacis cornus cervi, Dat spatium collo summasque cacuminat aures Cum pedibusque manus, cum longis bracchia mutat Cruribus et velat maculoso vellere corpus; Additus et pavor est. … … ut vero vultus et cornua vidit in unda, ‘me miserum!’ dicturus erat: vox nulla secuta est; Ingemuit: vox illa fuit,…
Sick Before the Sickness
Ann Mary // It’s been a long day. I am dreaming of drifting off to sleep, safely under my blanket. I close my eyes. Then, something crawls into the quiet. Is the gas turned off? it whispers. Before I can access memory, another has arrived. What about the door? it asks, louder now. Is it…
Prosthesis and Disability in the Age of Superhuman Functionality
Botsa Katara // Prostheses have been known to humanity since antiquity, with their earliest traces found in Ancient Rome and Egypt. But despite their existence for centuries, their evolution has been a slow and steady one. The change from simple wooden limbs to more aesthetically and technologically enhanced versions was the result of the 19th…
Collectively Holding Space: A Reflection
Amala Poli // I find, when I write, I don’t want to write well-made scenes, narratives that flow, structures that give a sense of wholeness and balance, plays that feel intact. Intact people should write intact plays with sound narratives built of sound scenes that unfold with a sense of dependable cause and effect; solid…
Technology, Paranoia, and the Therapeutic Encounter
“This isn’t therapy, what we’ve done. We’ve erased things.” — Heidi Bergman, Homecoming (TV version). Roanne Kantor and Anna Mukamal // This fall I had the pleasure of teaching a course on intersections between disability and technology. In putting together the syllabus, I quickly noticed that one of the most potent sites for this question…
Environmental Neurodiversity and Systems Change
Neşe Devenot // Neurodivergent perspectives inspired two of the biggest environmental justice movements of 2019—Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s “Fridays for Future”—and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. For her part, Thunberg garnered widespread media attention for linking her global impact to having Asperger’s, an autism-spectrum condition that Thunberg calls her “superpower.” According to Thunberg,…
Pat-a-caking One’s Way into the World of Blindness
Botsa Katara// “But he wouldnay get his fucking Dysfuckingfunctional Benefit man he would be lucky to get fucking re-registered … and the actual compen was a joke. Nay chance.” (Kelman 248) The epigram belongs to James Kelman’s Booker Prize winning novel, How Late It Was, How Late. Published in 1994, the novel documents the travails…
