Harlan Hahn Award Winners 2011
The Disability Studies Program is pleased to announce the following award winners:
Monica Olsson, Erica Sekins, Anu Taranath, Ronnie Thibault, Joanne Woiak, Anna Zogas
Monica Olsson, Women’s Studies and Cinema Studies double major, will be co-presenting: “Students as Activists: Pursuing Universal Design and Disability Justice in Academia” at the 2011 Society for Disability Studies (SDS) conference taking place in June.
Erica Sekins, Graduate Student ,M.P.A. Candidate, Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, will be co-presenting: “Students as Activists: Pursuing Universal Design and Disability Justice in Academia” at the 2011 Society for Disability Studies (SDS) conference taking place in June.
Dr. Anu Taranath, Dept. of English & Comparative History of Ideas (CHID), will work on two interrelated projects: to create a new course offering on the ideas of “Disability and Postcolonial Studies,” to be offered through CHID, and to begin making meaningful connections with the disabilities rights NGOs in Bangalore, India.
Karon (Ronnie) Thibault, Interdisciplinary Studies (IS) - Society Ethics and Human Behavior (SEB) - the University of Washington Bothell, will participate in the 2011 Autism Network International (ANI) Autreat Conference at the University of Pittsburgh in August.
Dr. Joanne Woiak, Lecturer Disability Studies & History, support for research on Washington state’s history of forced sterilizations of people with disabilities and a co-edited book project on the history of eugenics.
Anna Zogas, Graduate Student, Sociocultural Anthropology, support for research that investigates the identity of the “disabled veteran.”
About the Harlan Hahn Award
The Program has received a large donation of $550,000 from the estate of Harlan D. Hahn, disability activist and political scientist. Hahn was a professor at the University of Southern California, specializing in American and urban politics. He was a pioneering scholar in the nascent field of disability studies in the 1970s, and a key figure in the disability civil rights movement. He worked for passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Hahn died in April of 2008. His bequest stipulates that the University of Washington must use the funds for either an endowed chair in disability studies or for disability studies scholarships and research grants. The Disability Studies Program has decided to use some of the funds immediately for student scholarships and faculty grants, while looking for additional gifts to establish an endowed chair in the future. The Harlan Hahn endowment was officially announced in April 2010 (see http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=57234). To make a contribution to the DS Program, click here.