Journalist – Historian – Speaker
Heading downtown today to the Chicago Comic Con … as a journalist. I’ll be meeting with Mikki Kendall to talk to her about diversity and genre and power and twitter and more, heading to a panel, and seeing what I can see. Follow along with me on twitter and instagram.
It’s time for Game of Thrones essays again, I guess, providing easy news hooks to medievalists everywhere. This one from El Pais is excellent, if in Spanish (but Google translate does ok). It takes about the diversity and complexity of the medieval world, and I love this pullquote: La unidad de la Edad Media es …
Psych Ward Reviews is Kit Mead’s “Yelp for Psych Wards,” a crowdsourced database of experiences and outcomes in psychiatric wards around North America. Crowdsources, but not crowdfunded. Mead has been doing this work on their own, and it’s time for that to change. Join me in supporting Psych Ward Reviews on Patreon. Here’s the origin …
When the horrific United video broke last week, many disabled folks responded with empathy for Dr. Dao, but also by wanting non-disabled folks to realize that air travel has long been horrific for disabled travelers. Now Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) has gotten into the issue with a letter to Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, linking the …
The parent essay or memoir on discovering one’s child is not typical in some fashion is at once among the most common disability-related genre and one of the most difficult to do well. Of necessity, the essay has to move through ableist ideas about normality, encounter the challenges of having a disabled child, and then …
It really shouldn’t be surprising when that the cop who shot a black man lying on the grounds with his hands up, urging his Latino autistic client to do likewise, was charged. It is surprising. We’re not used to even this first step towards accountability happening. But Officer Jonathan Aledda was arrested and charged with …
I wrote a piece about the shootings in San Bernardino for CNN. Once the media realized it was neither terrorism nor Sandy Hook style massacre, national interest quickly faded. That’s precisely the wrong choice. My son is a 10-year-old boy with Down syndrome. He spends part of every school day in a special education classroom. …
I love the way the show Switched at Birth handles disability. I’m an overthinking critic, and I’m happy to overthink and criticize any cultural product, but I think Switched at Birth is amazing for so many reasons. But here’s why I started watching it. Emmett, in this scene, is arrested. He’s working on his bike and can’t …
The most interesting thing happening in hearing aid technology is not found in the tiny, expensive, invisible devices, but in the erosion of social stigma over visible assistive technology. Because big headphones with computers inside to manage sound are easier, and cheaper, to build. David Owen, writing for The New Yorker, offered a long and …
Rikers Island is going to close. Good. Talila TL Lewis, the founder of HEARD, writes: Don’t forget Deaf prisoners in the ongoing fight to reform/abolish the legal and carceral system. READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE. Deaf people at Rikers are not only denied meaningful communication with practically everyone on the island, they are denied meaningful access …