Congratulations to these people who were awarded grants through the UW DS Program
The Dennis Lang Student Award is given annually to a student who embodies Dennis’s spirited commitment to and academic excellence in the field of Disability Studies. The winner of the 2015 Dennis Lang Student Award for Disability Studies and Activism is Tash Hansen-Day. Tash served as this year’s Outreach & Programming Coordinator of the D Center and is graduating this spring with their major in Disability Studies.
Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund Disability Studies grants 2015
1. Tiffany Woelfel, student pursuing both Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health, & Megan Roake, undergrad majoring in Psychology and LSJ
They will create a pilot program for a monthly student group that would provide a safe space for students to come share their stories, ask questions, or add input to how we can create a more inclusive campus and support one another as students with disabilities surviving sexual assault. One outcome would be to create a list of recommendations for campus stakeholders on ways to meet the needs of students surviving campus sexual assault with disabilities. They would present a poster about this project at the Society for Disability Studies and submit an article for publication in an academic journal or as a blog post.
2. Michael H. V. Nguyen, 2nd year medical student
He will present two posters to the American Public Health Association annual conference, discussing disability representation in health education about prenatal genetic testing, and addressing access to family planning services. Attending this conference will allow him to meet and network with people in the Disability Section, doing work in disability and health. His contributions will help medical professionals gain a better understanding of how genetic testing and access impact people with disabilities
3. Yonas Seifu, Master of Business Administration student
He will write and present his journey as disabled person over the past 8 years. Yonas writes: “My young career trajectory was abruptly paused by a stray bullet that penetrated a window and a wall to strike me in the back of the head, leaving me critically wounded. During the months and years following my injury, I had to relearn how to speak, read, and write through intensive therapy. … Being disabled, immigrant and African American male has given me some powerful insights.” He plans to present his story and writing at various scholarly venues and brain injury support groups, and develop his work through discussions with these groups.
4. Marcella Ascoli, undergraduate majoring in Science, Ethics, and Behavior at UW Bothell
Marcella will conduct an ethnography of public parks in the King County Area, that will include producing photos, maps, and interviews with disabled users about accessibility beyond ADA guidelines. The project will result in a paper and an interactive online map to evaluate the accessibility of parks.
5. Kai Kohlsdorf, PhD student in GWSS
He will present work from his dissertation “Re-Signfying Sexuality: Towards a Trans Disabled Erotics of Care” at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference and next year’s Society for Disability Studies conference. Kai’s project sits at the cross-sections of Queer Theory, Trans Studies, and Disability Studies, and pushes these fields to engage more deeply with one another through a focus on sexuality as a process of demedicalizing “deviant” bodies and through an engagement with erotic performance.
6. Heather Evans, PhD student in Sociology and Project for Interdisciplinary Pedagogy (PIP) Teaching fellow at UW Bothell
She will present her paper “Uncovering: Disability Stigma and Identity Management” at the SDS conference this month in Atlanta. Her dissertation uses phenomenological and discourse analysis techniques to unpack the meanings of ‘disability’ among adults who have acquired non-apparent or episodic impairments through chronic illness or injury.
7. Carrie Griffin Basas, completing her M.Ed. in College of Education in Education Policy, and starting PhD in College of Education’s Social and Cultural Foundations program
Her project is titled “The Pain of Difference: Quieting the Un-American and/or Disabled in Seattle’s Schools through Corporal Punishment.” The focus of her dissertation will be how categories of disability were constructed historically within the school system, and to what extent those demarcations were based on immigration status and race. She writes: “The hidden curriculum of education and its sorting mechanisms teach us a great deal about whose lives matter and what values we expect schools to transmit. The first step in this project is an inquiry into how corporal punishment, as a form of de facto citizenship education in Seattle Schools has been used historically to quiet and conform disabled and racialized bodies. To what extent were special schools in Seattle used to expand categories of disability and to enforce control and conformity over minority residents’ bodies and minds, particularly around issues of citizenship?”
8. ET Russian, physical therapist UW Medical Center
The grant will support the research phase of their current project, an installation piece titled Casting Shadows. They write: “Casting Shadows is a multi-sensory video installation piece of short comics portraying stories of people with disability and chronic illness. Each short video will feature pen/ink illustrations with text captions, edited with a soundscape. The collection will include approximately seven video comics in total, each roughly three minutes in length. I will exhibit the work as an installation piece in a variety of venues including art, public, and academic spaces. As an installation piece each video will be projected onto various surfaces within the exhibition space. The intent is to create the sense that there are multiple people in the room having a cultural conversation that the viewer is invited to witness. I was drawn to create this piece because story telling is vital and the disability experience is characterized by isolation. People living with disability and chronic illness are commonly thought of as individuals with problems, rather than members of a social minority who share a rich cultural experience and social history.”
9. Sherrie Brown faculty, Research Professor, College of Education, Adjunct Research Professor, School of Law, Associate Director, University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities.
Project titled “Youth with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (I/DD) and Juvenile Justice: Investigating the Special Education Connection in Washington State.” She will conduct research, write a paper, and deliver a presentation at the Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity. The project will involve data collection necessary to help explain why youth with disabilities are disproportionally incarcerated in juvenile facilities. Additional information is being collected through a qualitative study of Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) of youth with I/DD currently incarcerated in one juvenile facility in Washington. With information from both the quantitative and qualitative research, changes can be proposed to ensure that instead of punishing youth due to their impairments, we deliver supports and services appropriate to their needs so that they are not criminally institutionalized.