Jay Dolmage--"Mapping Composition: Inviting Disability in the Front Door"

"Working with the metaphors of steep steps and retrofitting, and with the concept of Universal Design, Dolmage explores how instructors can increase access to both the literal and ideological maps of composition...The steep steps characterize the academy's hierarchical and exclusive culture: difficult to climb, and representing a barrier more than an invitation to enter; this traditional image of the intellectual gateway to higher education proclaims that not all can succeed and many will be excluded. The retrofit--the ramp in the back or around the corner--symbolize a slightly improved but still grudgingly accommodating culture more than a decade after the passage of the ADA."

"How disability 'fits' into our structures and practices reveals much about their potential for inclusion and exclusion. Attention to disability shows that physical structures equate with ideological structures" (15).

"In the following pages, I sketch a new map of composition, one that recognizes how students with disabilities have been excluded, how the academy has accommodated them, and how disability, as an identity and an epistemology, has and will continue to push us to see teaching and learning in new, broader, and more empowering ways" (15).

Dolmage's metaphors are visible, tangible, and recognizable and they are "produced ideologically, in the world in which you move." They are

• steep steps "to keep certain bodies and minds out"
• retrofit--we "add ramps at the sides of buildings and make accommodations to the standard curriculum"
• Universal Design--"an enabling space for writing and a way to think broadly about ability"

"composition grew at a time when issues of ability were framed according to a deficit model...Composition has been, from the very beginning, concerned with approaching an expanding institutional space in an egalitarian manner while responding critically to the demand for ever more narrow interpretations of the bodies within it" (15).

"Disability is also produced, sometimes most powerfully by our uses of space. If the composition teacher wants to treat students ethically and respectfully, she must consider the spaces where she teaches in terms of disciplinary attitudes, but also in terms of bricks and mortar, walls and steps that exclude bodies...we must map composition in terms of the exclusionary potential of spaces and see the potential for constructing alternative modes of access" (16).

--Steep Steps

As a discipline, the way we see ourselves is projected onto our classroom spaces that exclude. The self of selves that have been projected upon the space of the university are not just able-bodied and what is considered normal, but exceptional, elite. The university is the place for the very able" (17).

"In composition, such steep steps come in the form of a restrictive grammar and usage rules that allow writing to be added up" (17).

Compositions can be seen as a sorting mechanism. "This sorting is, of course, more than just a managing of space; it is a discursive marking that reaches into minds and bodies..This focus on standardization...'makes writing much more suited to the business of class and cultural discrimination...'usage rules are  the conventions of written language that allow Americans to discriminate against one another. Questions of usage are tied to social attitudes about who is intelligent and well-educated, and who is not'" (17).

"As teachers of composition, we recognize the diversity of the standards we teach. But we must also recognize our roles within institutions and disciplines, and perhaps even our personal pedagogical agendas, in which we may seek to avoid and disavow the very idea of disability--to give it no place" (18).

"It could be said that the academy is a primary enforcer of cultural norms...American academies have delineated and disciplined the border between able and disabled, 'us' and 'them.' These line drawers were able to solidify their own positions as they closed the doors on others...One way to map the spaces of academia and disability would be to look at the ways land was parceled out in the United States...the distance between..the able and the disabled, has a particular structure. In the writing classroom, when teachers try to ascertain what this structure of exclusion looks like, they search students' writing."

"Clearly, disability in the college classroom is not respected. It is something to fix. The method of fixing disability focuses on patterns of the 'typical,' and the 'natural,' implying that disability is neither...Instead, the process of normalizing...the process of writing is used in service of exclusion, delineating the 'abnormal'" (19).

"In the case of the basic writer or the learning disabled (LD) writer, the disability is the writer's, and the university thus marks the writer as foreign and irrational. Not surprisingly, foreignness and irrationality are two of the most commonly applied metaphors for people with (all types of) disabilities in the history of the Western World" (19).

"Both basic writers and LD writers are stigmatized socially by their labels...Certainly, by labeling LD errors as bizarre, teachers absolve themselves of responsibility for understanding the error or the student. They stop teaching. But more remarkably, this allows the teacher to label anything bizzare, or beyond their comprehension or imagination, as disabled. The move is to disavow the error and dismiss the student and his or her writing, as bizarre, far from normal. This version of foreign and irrational, bizarre disability serves to reinforce the fiction of the writing teacher's natural, typical, rational ability" (20).

"We are keenly aware of issues of class, race, and gender, and when this is not the subject matter of our classes, it is at least a key consideration of our pedagogy. Yet we need to ask ourselves some important questions."

--The Retrofit

"To retrofit is to add a component or accessory to something that has already been manufactured or built...it acts as a sort of correction" (21).

"Common reason then seems to dictate that disability is supplemental to society, that it is an afterthought" (21).

"disability in writing programs is made invisible most of the time, and called bizarre when necessary--when the paradigm needs to assert its boundaries; when teachers need to impose the visibility of standards; when they need or want to define themselves and their classrooms as not bizarre; when they want to identify their work as typical or natural; when they stop learning or teaching" (21).

The retrofit is a halfhearted cure that doesn't help all.

"when students are referred to Disability Services should they desire assistance. The message to students is that disability is a supplementary concern" (21).

"It is important, however, to recognize that the retrofit is often only an after-the-fact move because the facts refuse to recognize disability as a reality, or the factors cast disability as a strategy, or the benefactors claim accessibility not as everyone's right bust as their opportunity to provide charity" (21).

"The first step is to recognize disability as an embodied fact, an identity. To ignore this fact is to do violence...we need to allow for an environment in which students can claim difference without fear of discrimination...disability cannot be seen as something one person diagnoses in another. Disability must be seen as socially negotiated; people with disabilities must be seen as the moderators, the agents of this negotiation" (21-22).

"Instead, all students and teachers, coming to the conversation with varying abilities, must redefine, what they are able to do together...changing the spaces in which we teach is necessary if we want to teach and learn from all students" (22).

--Universal Design

"UD is defined as 'the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation of specialized design'" (23).

UD contains:

• Equitable Use
• Flexibility in Use
• Simple and Intuitive Use-Easy to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
• Perceptible Information
• Tolerance for Error
• Low Physical Effort
• Size and Space for Approach and Use 

One college uses these recommendation in their pedagogies and allow students to show what they've learned in a variety of ways.

"UD is not a tailoring of the environment to marginal groups; it is a form of hope, a manner of trying" (23).

UD "offers composition a way to locate itself not in response to changing hostile geographies but as a proactive architect of future possibilities" (25).

"UD does offer ways to move, theoretically, that have everything to do with the universal--not as a means of homogenization but as a way to complicate divisive notions of difference with new models of cooperation" (26).


A

Margaret Price--"Writing from Normal: Critical Thinking and Disability in the Composition Classroom"

"Price's close analysis of students' positioning in language offers teachers a useful model for responding to student writing when the topic may be personally and politically charged...she does not directly challenge the ideology of their discourses, because she understands how dominant cultural norms make their way into texts and because she respects her students"

Most non-disabled people have a "privilege"--"having an unmarked body and the attendant power to gaze 'from nowhere.'" (57)

Price's article is borne of a case study in which she taught a comp class that explored the idea of normalcy using DS discourses.

"When we write, we align ourselves with particular worldviews; we step into and out of subject positions; we signal our alliances and our enmities...It's actualized every moment in a material world, a world where bodies are prevented from moving off curbs, entering public buildings, caring for themselves, remaining safe. Learning to write with more self-awareness--becoming more able to identify, consider, and change the ideologies that are enacted in our writing--is a key goal of the critical writing classroom" (57).

--Exploring Normalcy: The Course of the Course

The author found it relatively easy to come out to her class as queer vs. non-disabled.

"I wanted my students to examine their own positions, to think about the relations of power that gace rise to those positions, and to take action in their writing to challenge and perhaps change, relations of power that they perceived as unequal" (58).

"I began to see that I could not effectively study critical thinking about disability...without focusing on students' identities and subject positions as they related to disability" (59).

--Methodology

"As I identified categories of critical thinking in my data and sorted all the data according to these categories, I found that two primary concepts emerged again and again: students' use of pronouns and students' use of what I came to call 'key terms.' Students use of pronouns was an early indication that something interesting was going on in terms of subject position and disability" (60).

"Key terms, too, were something that emerged repeatedly as I analyzed difference sources of data. I noticed that students' uses of certain terms, such as 'overcome' or 'suffer,' semed to indicate moments in their writing or speech that were heavily loaded with significance.

Tara: I'm an Outsider Looking In

"Tara's use of pronouns reflects her sense that disability involves a concrete divide between insiders and outsider, 'us' and 'them'" (62).

"This, of course, is the privilege of occupying an unmarked position such as nondisabled, white, straight, or male; one's position is assumed to be the case until stated otherwise" (63).

"Tara seems to be aware that her ideas about what 'normal' means--and hence, what discourse(s) she is adhering to when using it--are in flux. Her quick reversal...indicates this. 'Normal' is a term that she began discussing early in class, and one that she continues to think about, and revise her perspective on, even after the class has ended" (64).

--Joe: It Kind of Hit Home

"I began to realize that for Joe, it does not make sense to discuss disability without referring to his experiences with his cousin, his classmate, and his mother...His failure to include himself in his response to my question could be seen as a way of using the 'view from nowhere.' But seen another way, Joe is citing his experience precisely in order to identify himself. His identification is channeled through others' identities; the two seem too intertwined to separate meaningfully" (64).

"I was struck by these word choices because, although Joe's essay makes use of DS discourse, that discourse seems to be braided with others--in this case, an ableist discourse, which assumes that a person with a disability who asks for accommodation must be either unreasonable ('complaining,' 'obsesses') or pitiful ('cries out')" (66).

--Kathleen: You Want Someone to Help You, But You Don't

"Kathleen used her own experience of disability as a touchstone when analyzing Clare's essay. In fact, she indicated during out individual interview that it was only through her own experience that she could approach discussion of Clare" (67).

"However, Kathleen's identification as a person with a disability is dynamic...At times she said that she 'had' a learning disability...at other times, she said that she 'has' a learning disability...Perhaps in part because of this dynamic identification, Kathleen's writing and speech take up a variety of subject positions around disability" (67).

"My aim here is not to uncover Kathleen's 'real' intention as a writer, but rather to emphasize that she is forced to shift between subject positions in order to get her ideas across. She is drawing on different kinds of authority when writing this essay...it also incorporates a discourse that calls on an individualized model of disability" (69).

"Disability studies rejects the notion of 'overcoming' in relation to disability, arguing that this locates disabilities in individuals who are then charged with 'overcoming' their disabilities in order to avoid being treated as tragic less-than-humans" (69).

"I read Kathleen's valuation of her own ability to 'overcome' as a survival strategy, a way to think about herself and her disability positively....sometimes it seemed more respectful simply to try to understand where she was coming from" (70-71).

"Moving from mainstream discourses of disability to DS discourse requires a radical shift of mind, and it is unsurprising that Kathleen finds it difficult to adopt this discourse fully into her writing. The stakes for her are higher than they are for Tara...For Kathleen...taking up a new discourse around disability may also mean recognizing the material effects that it will have in her life" (71).

--The Stakes of a New Discourse

"All of us in theory face the same dilemmas that Kathleen cannot avoid" (71).

"In other cases...a student must writer her way away from normalcy, using her own nonnormative subject position as a springboard into analysis of disability. Different subject positions, different identities, do not determine how students approach the topic of disability of their facility with DS discourse...the major finding I made during the course of my study is that students' own subject positions and identities cannot be avoided when teaching DS in the writing classroom--nor can my own. The only way to take up DS in a writing classroom and not focus on identities and subject positions would be to ask every student to employ a 'view from nowhere'--and hence to assume that we are all, in the most static and damaging sense of the term, normal. Those of us who are nondisabled must begin to see that our stakes in DS discourse are as high as the stakes held by people with disabilities. Although some of us write 'from normal' in the sense that our sociopolitical positions mark us as 'normal,' we must also write 'from normal' in the sense of 'away from normal'--challenging ableist discourses, and insisting on access to the topic of disability" (72).

Lewiecki-Wilson and Brueggeemann--Rethinking Practices and Pedagogy: Disability and the Teaching of Writing

"The question posed by disability studies ask us to think carefully about language and its effects, to understand the role of the body in learning and writing, to view bodies and minds as inherently and wonderfully divergent, to consider issues of access and exclusion in policies and in the environment, and to reengage with theories of difference and diversity...We suggest that if teachers do not learn about disability from the perspective of the disabled, they will not recognize a need to change their pedagogy." (1).

"In short, disability studies uses disability as a critical lens to interrogate history, art, literature, rhetoric, religion, philosophy, popular culture, political science, communications, speech therapy, nursing, education, architecture--indeed, all the disciplines of a university. As writing teachers learn about this rich field of study, they will start to see its applicability to composition and rhetoric and possibilities for future growth" (2).

--Acknowledging Disability, and Its Myths and Tensions

The enrollment of students with disabilities is increasing, but many don't self-identify or seek help from disability resources because they fear the stigma attached to being identified as disabled.


"because the disabled do not form a single, visible category with a set of common, identifiable features, people with disabilities typically are not construed as a unified group. As educators, we can and should all acknowledge and affirm the presence and the importance of embodied difference" (2).

"Disability is not necessarily a curse or a horrible affliction, it is not a static state, and it is not always something to be cured" (3).

"Another common assumption we hope to dispel is that when disabled students do show up in college classrooms they 'just want to be treated the same' and that ignoring their disabilities is, therefore, the best and fairest policy for instructors...another powerful myth: that the successes or failures of students with disabilities are entirely the result of individual effort and motivation, and institutional and material barriers...play no role in their successes or failures" (3).

"One of the first realities they encounter is that they no longer have the legal protections afforded to public-school K-12 students. They are not guaranteed a right to education at the college level, they must themselves pay for any testing needed to document a disability, and they may ask for but not necessarily receive specific accommodations" (3-4). This self-reporting and non-guaranteed paradigm often results in "dire academic consequences."

"When professors lack access to disability history, theories, and perspectives, and when they don't critically examine common assumptions about teaching and learning, it becomes all too easy to believe that students with disabilities cannot do the work or that they do not belong in college" (4).

"Making writing classrooms and curricula inclusive and accessible to those with disabilities means employing flexible and diverse approaches to the teaching of reading and writing to ensure pedagogical as well as physical access; using multiple teaching and learning formats; welcoming students who are disabled within the required disability statement on course syllabi; and including disability issues or perspectives in course content and faculty development workshops" (4)

--Rethinking Expectations and Practices

"The critical concepts of disability studies help us and our students examine language and images with these issues in mind, thereby improving literacy skills and leading writers to give greater consideration to their rhetorical choices and the effects their choices may have on people and practices" (4).

"Such sorting (learning disability, basic writer, ESL) reaffirms the idea of disqualification and deficiency while also allowing the so-called mainstream to continue in its rutted parth with few changes made to its practices" (5).

--Negotiating Pedagogy and Research in the Classroom

"Rather than approaching a student with a disability as a 'problem' needing a particular cure that brings the student back to conformity with the 'normal way of doing things,' the inclusion of students with disabilities and the topic of disability offer an opportunity to change teaching methods and content so that they provide more flexibility and choice for various kinds of students. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), developed out a the accessibility movement of the ADA, emphasizes a range of flexible, multimodal practices and a philosophy for teaching that stresses the importance of addressing different learning needs and styles by offering many pathways to achieve class goals" (6).

The authors don't believe they can prescribe universal "solutions" for disabled students because disabilities are so varied. Instead they recommend designing courses and pedagogies that relate to varied learning styles and different learners.

They recommend conferencing with students to better understand how teachers can help meet the student's needs.


"When students and teachers recognize that disability is always a part of our culture, our society, out relationships, and our lives, then the fictional perspective of an 'able' world shifts. In this shift, a new space emerges. The new space is one we may not previously have recognized as our own, but it is, nevertheless, a place we have actually inhabited all of our lives, one where disability is everywhere a part of our life" (9).