Category Archives: Conversations

News Chat: A Classroom Activity for Disability Studies

Written by Psyche Ready, with support of the DAC team. This essay is about the “News Chat,” an assignment I developed a few years ago that was an unexpectedly amazing addition to a class I’m teaching now at UConn, “Disability in American Literature. The News Chat assignment is simple: find a news article on aContinue reading “News Chat: A Classroom Activity for Disability Studies”

Generational Melancholia

Written by Paula Mock, with support from the DAC team Content Warnings: Suicide, institutional abuse/trauma, details of mental health diagnoses “Well, you know your great-grandmother had been in an institution in the fifties, right?” My uncle Erich, my mom, and I were sitting around in Erich’s living room, surrounded by fancy furniture and glass figurinesContinue reading “Generational Melancholia”

18 Models of Disability

Presentation by Kelly Coons, with support from the DAC team Creator’s Statement: This video, created for an annotation assignment in ENGL / WGSS 6750 – Doing Disability Studies in the Humanities, aims to distill 18 models of disability through the lens of a question and answers segment.  There is a dash of parody targeted atContinue reading “18 Models of Disability”

The “Difficult Choices: Disability on a Dirt Road” podcast

Created by Kate Youngdahl-Stauss, BreadLoaf School of English student, with support from the DAC team. “Difficult Choices: Disability on a Dirt Road” explores the very different choices made by two neighbors confronting severe illness in rural Vermont. An intimate portrait, this “podcast with pictures” highlights the tensions between the desire to stay in a belovedContinue reading “The “Difficult Choices: Disability on a Dirt Road” podcast”

What *IS* the DAC Blog?

Written by the DAC team Brenda Brueggemann: The DAC blog is a place to feature not only academic but also advocacy-activist and community work, starting with the UConn campus.  And perhaps, in the future, growing outside the Storrs city limits.  Not only to UConn’s regional campuses (wouldn’t that be great?) but even to other collegeContinue reading “What *IS* the DAC Blog?”