Medieval Cripples, Crazies and Imbeciles ... and a Service Dog?

New blog!

2011-06-16T11:24:00.000-06:00

In case anyone's still reading this, I'll have a new blog up in the next few weeks. This blog will remain up until then, at which point the posts will likely be transferred to the new blog.

Cheers!

New co-blogger tomorrow!

2009-01-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

The title's self-explanatory.

See you tomorrow!

Medieval wonders of the world

2009-01-01T08:00:00.002-07:00

[Heemskerck's depiction of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, 16th c.]

A few days ago I was watching a documentary on the seven wonders of the world. It remarked, quite correctly, upon the fact that the list of the seven wonders of the world was not fully fixed until the medieval period, and that the most famous images of the wonders were produced by Maarten van Heemskerck in the sixteenth century.

What would medievalists consider to be the seven wonders of the medieval world?^[1] I'm not the best person to ask, I fear, as my list would most likely consist exclusively of cathedrals - heh.

1 Yes, I know Wikipedia has an article on the seven wonders of the medieval world, but in this instance I'm ignoring Wikipedia. Amusingly enough, the Golden Gate Bridge is right up against the heading for the section on the medieval wonders.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T00:01:00.001-07:00

Happy New Year and all the best in 2009!

Seeing medieval music

2008-12-31T08:00:00.002-07:00

A light-ish post after all of that stuff about disabled history, folks.

As most readers of this blog know, I have cochlear implants. Thanks to an auditory cable, I can plug my implants directly into gadgets such as laptops and iPods to listen to music and other auditory inputs directly without having to deal with background noise such as a noisy room.

I pretty much love my iPod. Now only if I could get the music from WALL*E downloaded on to it eventually, I'd be a happy camper. (Note to self: remember to do that in May before Kalamazoo.)

People often ask me what music sounds like to me. That's not really the right word to describe how I experience music. Yes, I do hear it thanks to some pretty damn good technology in my cochlear implant, but more than hearing music, I see it.

The idea of seeing music intrigues me because of the prevalence of stained glass windows in medieval churches and cathedrals. What would it have been like, as a hearing person or a deaf one or a blind one, to see and/or hear music in the medieval period? What would the effect of hearing a Te Deum being chanted or sung have been in the medieval period? Would it have been something spectacular, something with which the laity could more easily communicate with than the rote Latin of the Mass?^[1]

The visual impact of churches and cathedrals is well-known: the aural impact of these places would have encouraged churchgoers to feel as if they were in a liminal Jerusalem: very nearly there, but not just yet. Would the sight of carved faces, angels, and demons, along with the stained glass resident in the windows, have acted as a visual accompaniment for the music, or would it have been the other way around? Would churchgoers have 'watched' the music race across the windows, straight as the coloured beams of light that fell upon the nave and columns, lighting up the church and bringing life, however fleetingly, to the carved and painted figures upon the columns, capitals, and walls?

Stained glass and figures within churches are often referred to as the poor man's Bible; why can't music have been the same, albeit in a more tangible sense? One can easily look upon or feel the carvings and monuments in a church. Such a process is by nature ephemeral: memento mori. Music in and of itself is certainly ephemeral as well - perhaps even more so, but music is something that can easily speak to everyone, regardless of whether or not they understand the coding implicit within images and monuments within a church.^[2] Even though a Latin chant still wouldn't be understandable for the laity linguistically speaking, the experience of hearing the music would still be quite understandable.

Would it have been the same way for those who were hard of hearing or deaf? Would they have looked at the walls and carvings and windows and traced the stories along them, from beginning to end, and perhaps back again? Would they have watched the sun play through the windows, or imagined them awash with light if the sky was overcast or if it was night? For that matter, would they have perceived candles as their form of music: watching the candles slowly being lit on All Hallows Eve or at Easter? Watched them slowly melt at the wick, or watched the 'procession' of flames move up and down the nave or ambulatory?

I'd like to think that if I had lived in the medieval period, I'd have seen candles as my form of music: candles would be something that I could see and watch moving. I could watch them 'start' when they were lighted, 'play' notes as they waxed and waned and flickered and changed colour and gradually melted the beeswax, and 'flourished' when they guttered out or were blown out. Watching them play 'in concert' across the altar or as they were carried or otherwise moved up and down the nave and ambulatory would have been something: watching this or that candle angrily sputter its 'notes' in protest as someone walked by or moved it this way or that, or watching the clergy move in tune with the steadily burning flames as they went through the motions of the Mass. Watching the thinly tapered candles race down the wick as the stout, thick candles lazily meandered down the wick, slowly giving the candles an ephemeral nimbus before descending further to seemingly light the candles from within, seeing a solitary candle left burning upon the altar after Mass.

Fiat lux. Memento mori.^[3]

1 "Rote" in the sense that one would have been used to the Latin employed in the rites associated with the Mass after a period of time. Also, the laity would largely have been 'deaf' in that they would have been unable to comprehend the Latin of the Mass. For a similar thought, we turn to Cicero, who noted: "Our countrymen as a rule do not know Greek nor the Greeks Latin; therefore we in their tongue and they in ours are deaf, and all of us are assuredly deaf in those languages, countless in number, which we do not understand." Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King (London: William Heinemann, 1927), 541.

2 For more information on how to 'read' a church, see Richard Taylor, How to Read a Church: A Guide to Symbols and Images in Churches and Cathedrals (London: Rider and Co., 2003) and Margaret Visser, The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church (Toronto: HarperFlamingo, 2000).

3 Let there be light. Remember that you are mortal.

Disabled histories: part III

2008-12-30T08:00:00.003-07:00

[Part I is here, and Part II is here.]

And we come to the end of Disabled Histories with a discussion of memory in terms of the deaf community, although this micro-discussion could certainly be expanded to include other disabilities and other historical epochs.

The genesis for this series was a comment in Catherine Kudlick's essay on disability history^[1] regarding the creation myth of deaf culture^[2] and history with the Abbé de l'Epée. Historical memory in terms of deafness thus begins with Epée: no earlier nor later. In his study of the importance of memory in constructing the French past, Pierre Nora wrote that "[m]emory is always a phenomenon of the present, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past."^[3]

The deaf community has always struggled to create a tangible history of its own, to find a way to link its present to its past and its memories. The recent attempt to create Laurent, a deaf community in South Dakota, signifies this.^[4] Communication in the town would have been limited to American Sign Language (ASL),^[5] but the community's memories and history are signified in the name Laurent, which evokes Laurent Clerc, a deaf Frenchman who was educated in Paris and moved to the United States in 1817 to establish the first American school for the deaf.^[6] The town would thus have strongly associated itself with Kudlick's "creation myth."

How do deaf communities, when everything befor Epée is essentially prehistory, construct their own history? What do they choose to include in their history, their memories? The difficulty with the above-mentioned "myth" is not necessarily that it is a "myth," but, rather, that it needed to be invented in the absence of a lengthier narrative based on history and memory. How and why do they signify a certain point - in this case, Epée - as the beginning of their history, their creation?

Part of this is the fact that deaf people began describing the deaf experience in documents that have since become historical source materials for current scholars working with deaf history, with the result that deaf history, as defined by "the deaf experience," is considered to begin with Epée. Another part of this is because it seemed a natural point to fix the beginning of deaf history.^[7] This issue is moot in a way, given the fact that History has fixed its dating system according to the life of Jesus, with the identifiers of BC (BCE) and AD (CE) marking time, even though there are other calendrical systems and means of marking time.

The fixing of deaf history as beginning with Epée indicates that memory is important in analysing and understanding deaf history: the ability to describe and explain the deaf experience, and the attendant feelings, experiences, and memories, is of equal value to, if not more important than, dates and places. This is perhaps the crux of the whole issue in terms of disability and disabled history: disability history is easy enough to research and write, as it's based on facts and figures, but the experience itself cannot easily be gleaned, and that is precisely what constitutes a disabled history - the history of the disabled experience, of what it is like to be disabled or to interact with those who are disabled or considered to be such.

This reliance upon - need for - memory in order to capture what is certainly a very common experience the world over throughout history demonstrates how transient and transitory disability history really is. The absence of references to disability is not necessarily a condemnation of disabled people and their experiences throughout history; it could just as easily be an acceptance of those people and their experiences through the understanding that disability and the disabled experience are both one and the same or as distinct as one wishes them to be. A fleeting reference to deafness in Quintilian^[8] or two more substantial, but still brief, references in Augustine^[9] could quite easily - and sensibly, I think - be read as proof that deafness - and disability in general - was a commonplace sight and experience that it did not warrant much mention in historical source material precisely because it was not an extraordinary thing and thus (more) worthy of mention.

This opens up the possibility that disability history is not necessarily disabled because there aren't many references or source materials available; disability history could just as easily be disabled because we, as scholars, are disabling it by attempting to build it up into something extraordinary enough to be worthy of study as a sub-field of history and thus separating it from the human - and historical - experience. I'm not by any means attempting to argue that disability history is unworthy of historical study in any form. My point is that as scholars, we consider references to disability to be extraordinary when they are to be found in the most mundane of places, just as most history is. History is the great equaliser in a sense: all facts, however mundane or extraordinary they may be, are waiting to be found and interpreted - that some have been discovered before others does not mean that those that are to come eventually will not be as useful as those that have come and those that have since long gone.

1 Catherine J. Kudlick, “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other’,” American Historical Review 108 (June 2003), 763-793.

2 Kudlick, 783.

3 Pierre Nora, ed. Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past. Vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 3.

4 New York Times. "As Town for Deaf Takes Shape, Debate on Isolation Re-emerges." 21 March 2005. (It appears that since then, the plan has fallen through.)

5 Wikipedia's article on ASL is not the best, but it's a decent-enough place to start.

6 A brief autobiography written by Clerc is included in Deaf World: A historical reader and primary sourcebook, ed. Lois Bragg (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 1-9. Also see Harlan Lane’s When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf (New York: Random House, 1984), which Lane wrote from the perspective of Clerc.

7 It could be argued that deaf history should more properly begin with Pedro Ponce de Leon, a Spanish Benedictine monk who taught two deaf aristocratic boys how to read and write in the seventeenth century, not with Epée.

8 In Book 11, chapter 3.66 of his Institutio Oratoria (Institutes of Oratory), the Roman orator Quintilian notes that hand movements and nods can express meaning in oratory, and that such gestures are to the deaf instead of speech (in mutis pro sermone sunt).

9 St. Augustine, The Greatness of the Soul and The Teacher, trans. Joseph M. Colleran (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1964). The first reference is in De quantitate animae (49-50) and the second in De Magistro (136).

Disabled histories: part II

2008-12-29T14:07:00.006-07:00

[Part I is here.]

A late Christmas gift for you readers - the revival of Disabled Histories.

In the first post, I discussed the issue of prehistory v history in terms of disability history; I concluded with the question of why parallel histories are necessary if the 'main' history has already been done.

I brought up the issue of parallel histories because this type of history is quite popular in medieval studies at present, even if it's not always explicitly acknowledged: it's not exclusively the province of disability history.

When one thinks of parallel histories, one thinks of at least two streams of history running parallel to each other, but therein lies our first difficulty. What exactly is this other parallel history? The easy answer would be to say that it is History, which, for most historians, conjures up images of eighteenth and nineteenth century historical studies and the Rankean ideal of writing history as it was^[1] along with the Whiggish interpretation of History.^[2]

If this is the exemplar that one employs in order to write a parallel history, then one has to ask what the point of parallel histories is, for historians are increasingly becoming further removed from this History (of Great Men)^[3] in that there are increasingly more sub-fields open to historical study. Are parallel histories important because of sub-fields as a reaction to History, or as a reaction to 'old' or 'outdated' History in favour of a more 'proper' and 'nuanced' History which takes into account the full human experience? If it's the former, then historians are being reactionary (or postmodernist or deconstructionist if one wants to use the current jargon) and challenging History; if it's the latter, then historians are attempting to work with what has come before, recognising that History is full of lacunae, both overlooked and unrealised, and, perhaps even more so, acknowledging that there is no such thing as History. History with a capital H implies that it is whole and complete, that it is unified and is (or can be) based on theories, philosophies, and narratives. There is no need for alternate histories as a result: a complete and universal history is, as the name implies, wholly complete. (This idea of a unified, universal history is by no means a new one.^[4])

What does all of this have to do with disability history, then? Disability history is just that - it seeks to examine the historical experience of disabled people; it does not intend to usurp h/History, but to supplement it and fill in a lacuna or two. The reality is that disability history - along with any other sub-field of history - is a parallell interpretation of history for its focus, if not the fact that it is a particular historian's focus. What I mean to say is that when one really considers History, one has to realise, and understand, that History has always been composed of parallel and conflicting histories; there are as many parallels and conflicts as there are historians, because each one of us has our own focus, interpretation, and priorities when it comes to analysing historical source material and contributing towards the development of h/History as a field of study.

Within the field of disability history, there are parallels (and conflicts) as well. As mentioned in my first post, deaf history is, at present, the most-developed sub-field of disability history,^[5] does this mean that deaf history should be considered the 'best' or most 'proper' form of disability history? Or perhaps just the luckiest in terms of the amount of historical material that deaf people and those who have worked with them throughout history (mostly the last two hundred years or so, that is) that has survived to the present day and become available for historical study?^[6] Is not the study of blindness or mental illness or any other disability as relevant as deafness?

Perhaps more importantly, parallel histories are relevant - and necessary - for the paradigm shifts that they encourage. A linear history implies that past events are less important or less better or less developed than current ones, which have 'naturally' improved upon those past events. Parallel histories, on the other hand, suggest that one can break up a linear view of History into a side-by-side view, not only in terms of examining and analysing events that occurred in different locations within a certain time period, but also in terms of comparing the past to the present. Perhaps the adage that history has lessons to teach us all does have some truth to it. Instead of perceiving medieval concepts of disability as being 'medieval' or worse-off than modern, 'proper' views, modernity can compare its views to those of the medieval period on the same footing instead of automatically assuming that the modern interpretation is superior to the medieval one.

This leads us towards the third point regarding disabled histories: a discrete, and potentially finite, history. I have used the term 'medieval disability history' to refer to medieval conceptualisations of disability and how these conceptualisations are understood in terms of the medieval period. The term itself implies that there are classical views towards disability,^[7] as well as Renaissance^[8] and modern views. I don't deny this; there are certainly classical and Renaissance views, as well as modern ones,^[9] regarding disability and its place in the society of the day.

The term itself, however, does imply that disability history has a longer pedigree than perhaps it really does. In the first place, can we really say that the concept of disability history existed before the late twentieth century, that there was a genuine idea that disability could, and did, exist as a recognised sub-field of history? Would medieval writers recognise and comprehend 'disability history' if we were to teleport ourselves back to the thirteenth century and bestow this idea upon them as much as secular historians would recognise and fully understand medieval conceptions of history? ^[10] In other words, would the concept of 'disability history' be understandable to medieval people, either in our 'modern' terms or in their 'medieval' terms? Would 'disability history', as a concept, even translate at all?

On the other hand, history relies upon source materials to fuel its engine. How far back could we go in terms of understanding disability history? There are certainly references to disability from classical antiquity, but this type of disability history would be a history of disability, not of the disabled experience: it is not until the modern period that one really begins to find an abundance of source materials written by and for disabled people.

In terms of a history of the disabled experience, ^[11] then, which is certainly one of the nuances couched within the term 'disability history', there appears to be a more discrete and finite period of history than for History in general. Referring back to the idea of prehistory v history in the first post, if we go by source materials alone, history proper for deaf people can be said to have begun in the late eighteenth century with the Abbé de l'Epée; everything before then is prehistory.^[12] The result is that deaf history has a longer prehistory than history; it is playing catch-up to History.

This is the crux of the issue: do we consider 'disability history' to be a history of disability, in which the human, lived, personal experience is secondary to the disability, in which case we have a wider swath of history with which to work with, or do we consider the phrase itself to refer to the human, lived, personal experience more so than the disability itself? In that case, we have limited our historical scope to the modern period as a result simply because of the abundance of source materials with which to work with and from. Which view of disability - the disability itself or the lived experience as a result of the disability - is more valuable to historians?

1 The Wikipedia entry on Ranke constitutes a fairly good preliminary introduction.

2 For an introduction, see Herbert Butterfield's classic study of Whig history, The Whig Interpretation of History.

3 This is not to say that this type of history is defunct or useless.

4 Anyone who's gone shopping at a bookstore for Christmas gifts has inevitably seen the sudden proliferation of books and atlases that purport to offer a complete or short and concise or updated history of the entire world, such as this, this, this, and this.

5 Catherine J. Kudlick, “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other’,” American Historical Review 108 (June 2003), 763-793.

6 See The Deaf History Reader, ed. John Vickrey Van Cleve (Washington: Gallaudet University Press, 2007) and Deaf World: A historical reader and primary sourcebook, ed. Lois Bragg (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

7 For instance, see Plato, “Protagoras,” trans. Stanley Lombardo and Karen Bell in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 758-9; Plato, “Cratylus,” trans. C. D. C. Reeve in Plato: Complete Works, eds. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 139-40; and Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King (London: William Heinemann, 1927), 535-41. The stories of the crippled (and eventually self-blinded) Oedipus and blind prophet Tiresias are well-known stories concerning disability from classical antiquity.

8 For a good introduction, see Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, "Deaf Signs, Renaissance Texts," in Perspectives on early modern intellectual history: essays in honor of Nancy S. Struever, eds. Joseph Mariano and Melinda W. Schlitt (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001).

9 To name but one example, see The Disability Studies Reader, 2^nd ed., ed. Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2006).

10 A literary answer to this question can be found in Michael Flynn's Eifelheim, which sees aliens crash in the Black Forest just before the Black Death hits Germany; the aliens are forced to seek aid from the villagers of Eifelheim, and a main 'thesis' of the book, if you will, is the translation of our modern perceptions of the world (through the aliens) to the villagers' medieval worldview and vice-versa.

11 See Herbert C. Covey, Social Perceptions of People with Disabilities in History (Springfield: Charles C. Thomas, 1998); Sharon L. Snyder and David T. Mitchell, Cultural Locations of Disability (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2006); Jan Branson and Don Miller, Damned for their difference: The cultural construction of deaf people as 'disabled', a sociological history (Washington: Gallaudet University Press, 2002); and Paul K. Longmore, Why I burned my book and other essays on disability (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), to name but a few sources.

12 This is quite apparent in books that cover the whole of Deaf history, which largely skim over the centuries before Epée, such as Clifton Carbin, Deaf heritage in Canada: a distinctive, diverse, and enduring culture (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1996); Paddy Ladd, Understanding deaf culture: in search of deafhood (Buffalo: Multilingual Matters, 2003); and A beginner's introduction to deaf history, ed. Raymond Lee (Feltham: BDHS Publications, 2004). Two attempts to interpret deaf history before Epée can be seen in Lois Bragg's article, "Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education," Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education (Winter 1997), 1-25 and Aude de Saint-Loup, "Images of the Deaf in Medieval Western Europe," in Looking Back: A Reader on the History of Deaf Communities and Their Sign Languages, eds. Renate Fischer and Harlan Lane (Hamburg: Signum, 1993), 379-402.

Dante's Inferno: The Interactive Experience!

2008-12-22T14:21:00.007-07:00

We no longer need to die before getting to experience Hell.

Thanks to EA Games, we can now tag along with Dante in Hell.

Being a modern interpretation (coughcough), there won't be any of the sissy "let's follow Virgil around!" business - it's all, "Demons. Kill," and other objectives that are just as violent and bloody, I'm sure.

I wonder if Jesus has been modernised for the Harrowing of Hell bit? I can just see it now: Jesus throwing suitably updated Holy Hand Grenades of Antioch* left and right while swearing (in a politically correct vein, of course) at His enemies and bearing down upon them like a banshee from..........a non-Dantean Hell on His way to victory, which, sadly, is not a part of this game. Apparently EA's decided that the Purgatorio and Paradiso don't make for good gaming material.

Any chance I could get an advance copy, EA? For review purposes, of course. Or research purposes. Either one works for me.

While I'm at it, anyone know if the Vatican will offer indulgences for spending virtual days in Hell?

More details on this game can be found at EA's webpage for the game here.

And, yes, I know Dante began writing the Comedy in 1308, not 1300, as the clip claims. (The story itself actually begins on Good Friday in 1300, though.)

If this game comes out before Kalamazoo next year, I daresay that the video game sessions will be very popular there.

*A reference to a highly amusing weapon in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Wishing you a very Teutonic Christmas season!

2008-12-14T13:43:00.002-07:00

Polish archaeologists have apparently found the remains of three grand masters of the Order of Teutonic Knights, and have used DNA testing to strongly confirm that the remains are of three fourteenth century grand masters.

The imagined medieval disability experience

2008-11-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Two friends of mine, who are also examining medieval disability history, keep reminding me that I have to teach them how to sign. Part of it is so we can communicate more easily amongst the three of us, true, but a large part (if not the larger part, I suspect) of it is because they're both genuinely interested in my experience as a deaf person, a disabled person. They see sign language as something that's part of who I am - it's not something extraordinary, yet it's certainly a part of my experience.

Their request has caused me to think upon its relation to the disabled experience: to what extent can one immerse themselves in the disabled experience, particularly the medieval disabled experience?

In terms of myself, I likely have the one disability that cannot easily be imagined in terms of the medieval period. If I had been born in the medieval period, I would not be able to communicate as I do now, that much is for certain. I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to be prelingually deaf in the medieval period. How would I communicate? How would I comprehend things? Would I be able to comprehend abstract concepts along with everyday, tangible concepts such as 'table', 'food', and so on? What language would I have?

As a brief aside, I did not put 'language' in quotation marks in the first instance because that would imply that whatever language I had would be measured against spoken language, whether that be English, French, or Latin. Whatever language I would have would certainly be a language to me, whether I understood it as a language or not.

I cannot imagine what the prelingual 'deaf experience' must have been in the medieval period. Even today, I cannot easily explain what it's like to be deaf in the twenty-first century: how, then, can I explain what it must have been like in the time of Aquinas?

I cannot help but think that this is how the medieval experience must have been as well. Being unable to discuss the experience of being prelingually deaf or irrevocably mad, for instance, would have required that people who attempted to understand these experiences would have had to imagine them, would have had to try to find a way to make the experience visible and tangible for themselves and others. This is to say that deafness and madness are invisible disabilities, not only because there is not necessarily an outward physical sign that these people are disabled. Also, in certain circumstances, the deaf and mad are incapable of conveying their thoughts and feelings about their experience, of describing them for others: their experiences are thus invisible as well. This does not mean that they aren't experiencing what we understand - or perceive - to be the deaf or mad experience: they are certainly experiencing their own experiences.

Our own experience, however, is ultimately an imaginary one, as the medieval experience was. The same is certainly true of my experience: I can only really imagine at what it must be like to be hearing: my cochlear implants give but the palest impression of what my friends experience in their lives in terms of their natural ability to hear.

We can certainly discuss the concept of disability, but we cannot discuss what it was like to be genuinely disabled unless we find some treasure trove of source material, which could still happen. In the end, though, we have the same issue today: how do we explain and describe what it must be like to be disabled in order to understand and categorise it? Perhaps instead of attempting to immerse ourselves into the medieval disabled experience, we need to try to immerse ourselves into the imagined medieval disabled experience.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow...

2008-11-11T11:00:00.001-07:00

[Poppies placed upon the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Canadian National War Memorial in Ottawa]

On 2 May 1915, during the Battle of Ypres, Major John McCrae, a Canadian military doctor, began penning the now-famous poem In Flanders Fields.

**********

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

**********

Lest we forget.

Horse zombies: long forgotten in medieval bestiaries!

2008-11-10T13:31:00.006-07:00

It seems people are looking for my blog from far and wide.

This desire, however, has led to some very...inteeeeeeeeeeeresting google searches.

Survey dogs + questions: I'd be glad to answer your questions, provided they're about service dogs, not survey ones. That's a new one.
Bottles + medieval: Thank Not Drunken Tom for that one.
Cool sounding medieval words: I'm glad to have been of service, even though I'm not quite sure which 'cool sounding' words I've employed that were deemed google-worthy. If you really want some cool-sounding words, take up Latin, Old English, and Middle English. Or something.
Famous cripples in history: Stand up and take a bow, Emma de Beston! And the rest of you, too!
Medieval opinion on the disabled: Let's hope the searcher wasn't looking for modern opinions that are positively medieval. *rim shot*
Mean domina: I believe you forgot four letters at the end: -trix.
Crippled dog death: Oh dear....
What is imbeciles: May I suggest moseying on over to the OED's website?
Gird thy lions: Oh, what an awesome phrase that is!
Cripples: Right to the point - I like that!
Tusculan disputations middle ages: Last time I checked, Cicero wrote the TD in his middle age, yeah.
Politically incorrect terms for disability: You're welcome!
Begging for money + disabled people: I guess that's what I get for writing that post on disability and begging.
Summa dog: Yes, that was the name of Aquinas' dog - Summa.
Silence imbeciles: We're all imbeciles in one way or another, so doesn't that mean the entire world should suddenly go mute?....
Cripple disabilities: A cripple with disabilities? If that works for you....
History of dogs britain medieval: Chase is pretty offended that you've implied she's a very old (grand) dame. She can still chase her ball, thank you very much!

And my personal favourite:

Horse imports + zombies

Yes. You read that correctly. Apparently my blog discusses horse imports and zombies.

Therefore I offer the following letter:

**********

Dear Sir or Madam,

I regret to inform you that this blog does not discuss horse imports and/or zombies either separately or in tandem...or in any grotesque physical combination of the two, although I suspect there may very well be some marginal images of horse zombies in a medieval manuscript somewhere.

If you do have evidence of horse zombies in the medieval period, please feel free to forward such evidence to this blog. I would be quite interested in seeing what horse zombies are and what powers were accorded to them, as I've long suspected that medieval bestiaries were incomplete.

Cordially yours,

Greg Carrier

So this is why medieval wills are so detailed....

2008-11-09T03:48:00.002-07:00

Warning: Completely random, non-medieval content ahead. Plus it's funny!

Anyone know if Aquinas ever discussed what to do if someone takes all your stuff after you've given up the ghost? (Thanks, Ali!)

Disability history + historians who are disabled = ?...

2008-11-09T02:44:00.004-07:00

First things first.

This is why scholars working on medieval disability need to know Latin. I look forward to our "brave blogger"'s next post!

Now to the meat of this post.

What exactly do I have to bring to medieval disability studies, really? As anyone who's read my blurb above at the top of the blog well knows, I'm disabled myself.

This is obviously a good thing for me. I can bring my personal experiences, my personal 'disabled experience/experience of disablity' to the table and use my experiences as a springboard for my research. (Read: Throw out ideas until Chase wags her tail, indicating that said idea is the best one she's heard so far. Either that or she's trying to get me to take her out for a walk....)

Of course, an objection to the above paragraph would be that because I am disabled, I must have an agenda of sorts. I'm disabled, so of course I'm all for finding disabled people in the records; giving them the time of day, allowing their neglected voices to finally be heard; and, of course, whacking History upon her head and giving her a hard time for not considering the disabled - after all, they were certainly around way before the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: God did not descend to the earth in 1701 and intone, "Fiat invalidi!"* The disabled certainly existed before the eighteenth century.

I answer quite simply: yes, I do have an agenda. All historians do. We all like to think that we're neutral, or at least trained to the point that we can detach ourselves from modernity to the point that we can immerse ourselves in whatever historical epoch we're studying, such as medieval Western Europe. The past is truly a foreign country; things were done differently then, to paraphrase the famous quote. It really doesn't matter whether I'm disabled or not. An able-bodied historian would face the same difficulty in trying to overcome his or her assumptions and prejudices (yes, even historians have assumptions and prejudices - we may not always be aware of them), as well as the struggle to view the period under study on its own terms rather than on modernity's terms.

A second objection to all of this would be that, being disabled, I cannot be expected to competently assess the historical disabled experience precisely because I am disabled; I should leave this to 'normal' historians. I reply that this is akin to saying that women can't be historians, and last time I checked, no one says this anymore (I certainly hope not!), so why is it acceptable to say this in regards to historians who are themselves disabled and interested in the disabled experience? (Note to self: stop reading so much Aquinas - you're starting to sound like him, at least as far as this post is concerned.**)

A third objection would be: why medieval history, of all things? Why not the eighteenth century? the nineteenth? the twentieth? the modern period? What's wrong with the medieval period? It's pretty dang awesome if you ask me. After all, we have William "Casket Exploder" the Conqueror*** and Pope "Better Dead than Alive" Formosus,**** just to name two people. And of course, we have natural philosophy, universities, the Carolingian Renaissance and...well, you get the point. It's pretty awesome. But I disgress.

Why medieval history? The problem with looking at the modern period is that historians of disability have become used to being able to access a wealth of records, not only about the disabled themselves (especially institutional records), but also records produced by the disabled themselves that allow historians to come a bit closer to understanding 'the disabled experience'. While it has made the disabled and their experiences more visible, it has, I think, also served to make them seem extraordinary, and not necessarily in a good way. This ... setting aside, if you will, of the disabled as a group worth studying in history has caused historians to rely upon explicit references to and sources concerning the disabled themselves. What this has done is it has caused the majority of disabled people who were fortunate enough to be recorded in documents throughout history to be disregarded precisely because they aren't extraordinary in that not much ink was spent in recording their presence. Let's face it. Who would we rather read about, a disabled person about whom we know an obscene amount, or a disabled person who only merits a fleeting mention as "the old deaf-mute" in a mouldering document somewhere?

How many of you knew that Quintilian discussed deaf-mutes in his Institutio Oratoria, commenting that gestures, just as those employed by deaf-mutes, appeared to be the common language of men? Or that he commented that orators could potentially learn how to handle their hands properly by studying deaf-mutes? Quintilian does not spill much ink on these two comments - they are fleeting, more than anything else. This does not mean that Quintilian disregarded deaf people (or disabled people in general) or disliked them or thought them not worthy of his precious ink. Rather, is it possible that he merely glanced at deaf-mutes precisely because they were ordinary people and not extraordinary? Surely Quintilian must have seen deaf people (as well as the blind, mentally ill, paralysed, crippled, and so on) in his lifetime: writers tend to spend much ink writing about extraordinary things rather than ordinary things, I find. This is why I find the medieval period so fascinating: when one realises that the disabled are in the records, not as extraordinary or intensely 'abnormal' people, but as perfectly ordinary, 'common' people, so many more doors open up than did before. (And it makes my job even more difficult, but it's worth it in the end.)

I often find myself reflecting upon where the field of medieval disability studies will be in a few years, and decades, from now. Will it be like women's studies, gender history, queer theory, in that it will have become (part of the) mainstream in academia, a topic worth exploring not necessarily simply because one is intrigued by it, but because it is acknowledged and encouraged? I certainly hope so.

Oh, yes. Before I forget, I promise that Disabled Histories will be completed by the end of next week. Shocking, I know.

*I know it's in the Bible and all of that, Brent. =P (For everyone else, a really lame, yet highly amusing, private joke between Brent and myself. I couldn't resist.)

**Medievalists will get this reference. For everyone else, since we're 1-1/2 months away from Christmas, take a look at the long-lost entry from Aquinas' Summa Theologica on Santa Claus. (Hint: Look at how Aquinas structures his discussion.)

***Courtesy of Orderic Vitalis, who writes of William's funeral Mass at the cathedral of Caen:

"William was eulogized before the assembled bishops and abbots of Normandy, and a request made that, if ever he had done wrong, he was to be forgiven. Incredibly, someone loudly proclaimed that the church had been built on land forcibly acquired from his father when William was duke. "Therefore I lay claim to this land, and openly demand it, forbidding in God's name that the body of this robber be covered by earth that is mine or buried in my inheritance." The man was compensated sixty shillings for the place of burial.

Then something even more macabre happened. The monk of Caen writes that William was "great in body and strong, tall in stature but not ungainly." When it came time to bury the heavy body, it was discovered that the stone sarcophagus had been made too short. There was an attempt to force the corpse and, says Orderic, "the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the by-standers and the whole crowd." Even the frankincense and spices of the censers was not enough to mask the smell, and the rites were hurriedly concluded."

****God bless Wikipedia. Also, is it just me, or wouldn't that painting by Jean-Paul Laurens look awesome in a medievalist's office?

Under New Management(?)

2008-11-08T13:21:00.003-07:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been considering what exactly I want this blog to do. I've been slowly realising that the blog's been happily taking on a life of its own, particularly with the presence of my ..... 'co-bloggers', let us say.

I had originally intended for this blog to act as a forum in which I could discuss ideas concerning disability in terms of the medieval period and the modern period, especially in terms of how modern thought about disability has been employed in attempts to understand medieval conceptualisations of disability. And there would be some ~~silliness~~ light fare as well: the last thing I wanted this blog to become was a pedantic one.

This blog will still remain an academic one at heart, but I think I will be allowing my 'co-bloggers' more opportunities to post - even I find that they have good things to say...assuming they can stop bickering among themselves long enough to write something. I will still discuss issues regarding disability and how disability and the disabled themselves were viewed in the medieval period, of course!

Check back for some new posts in the next week or so!

NOT a marriage made in heaven!

2008-10-20T12:09:00.003-06:00

Christian Cripple here. I really need to figure out how the heck to delete posts. That stuff Joe wrote below? I swear he should be on Hildegard or Dr. Aquinas or something.*

Anyone can see that Brent's post, while it's good, has a weak spot, and boy, is it ever a weak one. I could practically knock it over with my walking stick (which I have named Grignr, by the way).

Brent writes:

"Rather, I think that perhaps God gave these people to us as a blessing and an opportunity for us to reflect His love. Just as The Necessary Beggar has mendicants who give us the chance to offer a blessing, so those who are impaired give us the chance to show them love and grace. And in return, they are given the chance to show love and grace by accepting it from us and by teaching us to see the world through their eyes."

Now, I shall give him credit for qualifying his opening statement with "perhaps" instead of positing it as an absolute statement. This statement, however, argues that my role in this earthly city (thanks, Tom. Note to self: find a way to shut him up at night so you don't have to listen to Augustine this, Augustine that.) is secondary to that of a "normal," able-bodied person. What Brent is really saying here is that I've been stuck here to let good, normal Christians show how wonderfully Christian and charitable they are by giving me alms. I swear I should start working for the ~~Knights Templar~~ Salvation Army.

The problem with this statement is it still suggests that my disability is a result of sin. How, you ask? Well, think about it. If you, an able-bodied Christian, see me at the side of the road, I "inspire" in you a sense of charity because I'm a tangible person - you can see me (and it had damn well better be me, not Joe!), ergo you can undertake an equally tangible action in giving me some alms and being able to walk away with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside you that screams, "I was charitable today! I'm a good Christian!"

This line of thinking leads to two fallacies. In the first instance, you give me alms because you pity me, or you at least think that it is pity that you are feeling. This causes you to think, at least implicitly, that I am "worse off" than you are because of my infirmity, my inability to walk. By giving me alms out of pity (or at least a thought of pity), you are attempting to bring me closer to God by showing me that I am indeed worthy of charity. This is where the first fallacy lies: this line of thinking leads you to assume that because of my disability, I am further away from God than you are and that I must not be as loved as you are, ergo I am disabled precisely because of the stain of some sin that either I performed or that my parents performed.

The second fallacy follows from the above, but from my perspective, rather than yours. If I identify with my disability as being my primary identifier to society rather than as a secondary identifier, then I am leading myself into the fallacy which I will point out momentarily. What I mean by primary and secondary identifiers is quite simple. If I identify myself as being a disabled person, a cripple, someone who is incapable of walking normally and naturally, then I am using my disabilty to identify and circumscribe my personal and social identity. If, however, I argue that I am a person who happens to be (or simply is) physically incapable of walking, then my disability is a secondary identifier because I see myself as a person first, not as a disabled person first.

Now, the second fallacy is conditional upon my choosing one of the two "choices" above, if you will, in terms of how I self-identify and choose to identify myself visibly, to society. Indeed, this point of self-identification is one that all people must undertake, regardless of whether they are disabled or not, but I shall leave that for another post.

If I choose the first path, namely to see myself as a disabled person in which my disability is my primary (if not the only useful) identifier, then I am opening myself up to the fallacy of disability as sin as well. The reason is quite simple: if I see myself only in terms of my disability, then I either feel pity for myself or, worse, despise myself for my "difference" and my "abnormality," which would bring me to the fallacious conclusion that my disability is the result of sin, that it is the result of something that I must have done previously or that someone else, namely my parents, must have done. This is doubly injurious because not only does it cause me to mistakenly blame God - after all, He is love - but it also disables me in that it causes me to take a passive approach to my disability, to feel that there is nothing I can do.

Now, what of the second choice, choosing to see myself as a person who happens to be disabled? This approach certainly encourages one to take an active role in life, at least insofar as recognising that one's disability is not a passive concept, but is active in that one lives with the disability every day for the rest of one's life (in the case of those born disabled or who acquire permanent disabilities at some point in their lives). This choice is perhaps the more difficult one for a disabled person to recognise as being available, and also in choosing to go down this path in life rather than the former, because the former choice is certainly the easier one because of its premise upon disability being a passive, and thus static and unchangeable, concept..

But, you ask, how does this make sense if I am sitting out at a street corner begging for alms? This is the most difficult part to answer, I think, because it requires that everyone realise what they are really doing, both the disabled and the "normal" able-bodied. The simple answer to my question, obviously, is that those who are begging for alms must be those who chose the first path - disability as a passive concept, and thus as sin. If this is indeed the case, then Brent is indeed correct: the disabled are here for Christians to show them love and grace, but at the expense of the disabled person's identity and self-esteem, by reinforcing the idea that they are not worthy of God's love and grace. This certainly cannot be what God meant when He reminded us to show love and charity to others, just as Jesus did.

This is the question that we all have to ask ourselves, I think - how do we show - and accept - love and grace in such a way that it encourages us to grow and become closer to Him than seeing it as a rejection?

*~~Presumably CC's attempt to medievalise Oprah and Dr. Phil. [Omniscient Ed.]~~ Who the hell is this editor?! ~~Someone who knows what you've been up to lately, CC.~~ St. Nicholas? ~~Eh. Close enough. Now get back to your post!~~ Don't tell me what to do, "[Omniscient Editor!]" ~~Would you like me to smite~~ you? would that help? Er...can we forget we had this conversation? Fine, but I'm still watching you. [Omniscient Ed.]

Disability and Normalcy: A Marriage Made in Heaven?

2008-10-14T22:23:00.006-06:00

Joe here, folks.

That noise you hear in the background? Let's just say Tommy boy's taken my place as the cart-mover for Christian Cripple, and neither of them was happy about it. (Thank God I paid attention when we learned how to tie knots in ~~Boy Scouts~~ Little K-nigghits way back in the day!)

They both wanted to comment on what I think is a wonderful post by Brent regarding disability and perfection in heaven - particularly in terms of the Resurrection.

Tommy was saying that he deserved to write the post because he'd "hit Brent upside the head with the Summa"; somehow I suspect he'd have ended up spectacularly failing to even connect with his beer stein. Christian Cripple wanted to write about how Brent wasn't taking into account "the disabled experience," whatever exactly that is. (For the record, I think CC is incorrect - if one argues that one must find a "disabled experience," that goes against the idea that we are all the same in the eyes of God, that we all have the same requirements to follow, that we can all feel love, that we are capable of sin [within certain contexts, of course, seeing as we're discussing disabilities in general here], and so on.)

What I want to posit in relation to this discourse is a question that is at once easy and yet ridiculously difficult to pin down, let alone answer.

What of those who are "normal," that is to say, not disabled, but who live with the disabled every day? For me, I'm effectively Christian's family. He cannot get around on that cart on his own - he needs me (or at least today, Tommy) to .... "cart" him about so he can beg for alms. When Christian receives alms, I've always wondered: are the good Christians who give alms in a spirit of charity giving them just to Christian, or are they for me as well? Does Christian's disability extend to me as well by virtue of the fact that I am his limbs? Are we both disabled on our own, and complete when we work together?

Brent discusses the issues of perfection and love. Yes, God commands us to be perfect just as He is perfect, and he rightly reminds us that God is love. This is why the question that I concluded the previous paragraph has always stuck with me. Christian's inability to walk is an impairment, a physical inability to carry out a specific physical function - that is, walking. I, on the other hand, am capable of walking, so I am not impaired - I am "normal." However, is it perhaps better to say that I am, in fact "normal" not because I am physically "fine," but because I am willing to work with Christian to physically follow God's command to be perfect? My working with Christian, my lending him, if you will, of my legs allows him to be physically perfect as far as the constraints of this world allow, and allow him a sense of what society calls "normalcy."

Now, the issue is this. Am I in fact disabling Christian by helping him? Am I really teaching him that perfection is something physical, something tangible, something that can be attained only in this world? If this is indeed the case, then perhaps what Christian is thinking is that his impairment (and disability) are a result of sin and that he can never attain perfection, particularly if he assumes that perfection can only be achieved in this world and that it has little, if no, value in the end.

I think this is where most disabled people must stumble. God commands us to be perfect and that He is love, but how can He "disable" us if He is indeed love? Brent suggests this answer, and I agree with him, that God does not challenge us beyond our capabilities. The challenges in our lives are difficult - indeed, if they were not difficult to some degree, could they really be called challenges in the first place? The intriguing thing is that this argument, to me, stresses the innate normalcy of everyone's lives: we are all normal and equal in that we face challenges; the real difference is in what challenges we face and how we deal with them. His "disabling" of us through challenges is really His way of showing us that He loves us by teaching and reminding us, to recall Augustine, that perfection is what we seek. Perfection is very much like love: it is something quite intangible, yet it is quite achievable - after all, God would not command us to be perfect if it was impossible to achieve.

Perhaps what God is really trying to teach and remind us is that we disable ourselves if we attempt to go through life on our own, to treat it as being something individualistic, something that belongs to us and us alone. As Brent notes near the end of his post, we all have our roles to play: Christian has his role as "a blessing" and as "an opportunity for us to reflect His love." This is not to say that Christian is a passive actor in this world, for he has the "chance to show love and grace by accepting it from us and by teaching us to see the world through [his] eyes." It is a learning experience for all of us, but perhaps even more so for me, because when we return to the original question that began this discussion, namely, where do I fit in? Am I disabled or normal or in-between?

I think that all this discussion about disability in relation to Paradise, to the Resurrection, and the like, it is focusing on physical impairments - deafness, blindness, and so on - without really considering the issue of choice. Christian certainly did not have a choice in becoming crippled - he was simply born that way. I, on the other hand, made a choice to become "crippled" in the sense that by befriending him and working with him and helping him, I have essentially disabled myself by becoming Christian's legs. I am not seen as a complete person, but rather as a pair of limbs, and this is the question: who is more disabled here, Christian, or me? Am I like the wondrous "monsters" Mandeville itemises in his Travels? I honestly don't know.

I realise that this discussion has veered away from the arguments that Brent put forth in his post. This is not to say that I wish to ignore his points, but rather that I wish to push them further. I have certainly been created "ad imaginem Dei," whatever that means, just as much as Christian was.* As Augustine argues, this multiplicity of physical natures in this world is meant to remind us of God's power and His love and His infinite nature. I wonder if perhaps what Augustine was trying to say is that there are, really, an equally wondrous number of ways to achieve God's command and exhortation to be perfect and to remember that He is love.

Sigh. I think it's time to stop here - an empty bottle of "Chaos Theory: Butterfly" just went flying by my head** - time to relieve NDT before he does something grieviously irreparable to himself or Christian.

*Leave it to Joe to mess up the Latin. At least he used it correctly - "in the image of God." NDT

**Only Brent will get this reference, FYI.

A night out on the town!

2008-10-08T09:18:00.002-06:00

Damned mead. Er, I mean, damned writing. It's a pain writing out that Summa by hand with a quill and a bit of ink.

So after talking to Christian Cripple and ~~Joe~~*, we've decided that ~~three~~ two names on a manifesto aren't enough, so we'll be going out to find some more cripples to join our cause.

Wish us luck!

~~NOT Drunken~~ Tom - Just because I had too much ~~mead~~ ink to work with last night doesn't mean that I'm an alcoholic, CC. Don't you realise how hurtful it is to keep hearing you call me that?

*Joe ain't on the manifesto, so he ain't important. CC

Summa contra idiota(? Check the Latin with Tom)

2008-10-01T00:46:00.006-06:00

THE COMMUNIST(?) MANIFESTO
*Note to selves - look up communist in the dictionary to be sure it's not just a cool-sounding word.

It has come to our attention that this 'blog' has been allowed to deteriorate - there have been no 'posts' in nearly two months.

We, Christian Cripple and NOT Drunken Tom have decided that we must take drastic action to restore this 'blog' to its former glory...not that it had much glory to it to begin with. That's definitely the biggest priority around here - getting it some respectability. Especially seeing as the idiot allegedly 'writing' this 'blog' has decided to go and leave Disabled Histories incomplete. We'll have to remedy that as well.

With All Hallows coming up, we have decided to undertake a series of 'posts' centered around All Hallows and the images that it conjures. ~~It's All Hallows for me right now - damn mead!~~ Please ignore CLEARLY Drunken Tom, thank you.

As I was saying, I have a 'post' in the works which will discGOD ALMIGHTY HELP US! DEMONS! INCUBI! SUCCUBI! SAINTS PRESERVE US!

Tom, please do me a favour and stop drinking. The 'demons' you see are 'visiting' you because you had a little too much Granville Island tonight. I really wish you hadn't found out that you're partial to Kitsilano Maple Cream Ale. In fact, didn't you write somewhere in your Summa that drunkenness was akin to insanity? Oh, you'll write a post about that this month? Splendid! Joe, help CLEARLY drunken Tom to bed, will you?

Where was I? Oh, yes. I have a 'post' in the works which will discuss how awesome - coughNOTcough - it is that the medieval period is populated by angels and demons who seem to be hellbent on making me pay for my sins. Apparently this is a popular view elsewhere in the internets and in 'books'. Note to self: write a post one of these days about how modern 'books' are not books - where the heck are the pictures, for one thing? This age has clearly gotten out of touch with the awesomeness that is picture books.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?! IT'S CONTRA IDIOTAM! IF YOU ASK ME, YOU'RE THE IDIDEMON!DEMON! WHERE'S AN ANGEL TO SAVE YOU WHEN YOU NEED ONE?! THIS 'TITLE' OF 'ANGELIC DOCTOR' IS UTTERLY USEful. Trust me, Tom - you'll be glad I finished that word for you.

Right. Joe, you go get the Devil costume and I'll just sit here or something. Hey, we could use that pitchfork over there! I'll go try to pick it up so Joe can add it to his Devil costume. Hopefully that will scare Tom into passing out right here and now so we can get him to bed and get a decent night's sleep in exchange. I know he's got some inner demons but, dear God, must the entire world hear all about them?

And if that fails, I'll just tell him to read Angels and Demons by some guy called Dan Brown. That should do it.

Aw, crap. I just realised that Tom had to go and screw up what started out as a right proper manifesto. Eh. I'm too lazy to rewrite it, so I'll just append our names here. We can always write a proper manifesto later (by which I mean I will write it later).

The Ithst day of the Xstth month in anno Domini MMVIII.

Christian Cripple.
~~NAWTdrookntmmm~~Christian Cripple (for VERY drunken Tom).
~~Joe~~ He's not important enough to be included in a manifesto.

How DO you pluralise 'thesis'?

2008-08-03T00:59:00.001-06:00

Not sure how to pluralise 'thesis'? See here for the answer.

Finally Latin is good for something!

On another note, Disabled Histories will resume later this week.

Service Dogs and the UK - a good combo?

2008-07-18T14:42:00.003-06:00

My apologies for not posting for the past few days. I promise that Disabled Histories will be completed in the near future.

I've been having some fun figuring out how the heck I can bring Chase with me to the UK in February or March of next year for two to three weeks. I've found the DEFRA website, which outlines the PETS Scheme, which is what I'd be following in terms of making sure fuzzball is legal and all of that jazz.

I've already called Air Canada and British Airways, the two possibilities for me from Important-City-In-The-Middle-Of-Nowhere and I think I've kinda figured out what the heck I'm supposed to do in terms of the airlines. I'll be calling DEFRA regarding the PETS Scheme first thing Monday morning (literally! God bless time zones...) to sort out exactly what I have to do with Chase.

However, this is all terribly complicated and hurts my head. Medieval stuff doesn't hurt my head - heck, even medieval law doesn't, but it appears that modern laws and regulations do hurt my head.

In short, does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how I can try to make sense of all of this and make it as painless as possible?

Disabled histories: Part I

2008-07-11T10:35:00.005-06:00

[NOTE: Again, another very long post, nearly 2300 words. This is the first of a series of posts on disability history, so be ready for at least two, possibly three, more long posts in the next few days. To reiterate my point in my last post, any suggestions for adding post summaries to the blog would be greatly appreciated!]

While reading two posts on an interpretation of Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale and weeping animals in Ava's version of the Fifteen Signs of the Last Judgment over at ITM, I was reminded of my original PhD project.

In the first instance, I had planned on focusing on deaf history in 18th and 19th century Europe and North America. I had been - and continue to be - particularly fascinated by a comment Catherine J. Kudlick wrote in her essay "Disability History: Why We Need Another Other": she wrote that the creation of a school for the deaf by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée represented a "creation myth" for the deaf community.

This suggestion of the existence of a creation myth caught me, well, quite unawares. I had never thought of it in this fashion, but when I began to consider it, I realised that it had some very serious and interesting implications for deaf history and disability history in general. After my switch over to medieval history, I've realised that these two little words are still having an effect on my work in medieval history.

Four particular points come to mind fairly quickly when we think of the idea of a creation myth in terms of disability history in general:

prehistory v history
parallel histories
a discrete (and potentially finite?) history
the issue of memory

I will be using deaf history as my exemplar throughout this post, simply because it is the most-developed subgenre of disability history. (This is not to say that blind history or 'crip' history, etc. haven't been done, but deaf history has been done for a bit longer and has garnered most of the focus because of issues of language, sign language, communication, cultural identity, and so on.)

Before I continue to the meat of the post, I would like to note that this will be a series of three or four posts. This first post will deal with the first point of prehistory v history.

When I first read the creation myth comment, I suddenly conjured up an image of Epée coming along and solemnly intoning Fiat silentium!* Granted, 'silence' itself can be understood in several ways, as one of the novel things Epée did was assume that deaf-mutes were teachable, that they could indeed learn to communicate through French by reading and writing it. To this end, he determined that since he learned Latin via French, why couldn't the deaf learn to comprehend French via sign language?** The rest, to use a bad pun, was history.

Now, the establishment of a creation myth centered around Epée says something about deaf history itself. The obvious point is that deaf people today consider their identity and cultural group (in terms of the Deaf community) as having a beginning, as having begun with Epée. The general consideration is that Epée recognised them for what they could do, not for what they couldn't do, and it just snowballed from there.

However, this perspective reduces history to two distinct periods: Before Epée (BE) and After Epée (AE). The period BE, which covers everything before c. 1760, is thus reduced to "prehistory". The term "prehistory" can be understood in two different contexts here: one, it may refer to the fact that deaf people did not appear very frequently in the records or were incapable of leaving behind historical artefacts and/or reminders that they did exist BE, and it may also refer to the fact that deaf people consider (pre)history BE to be irrelevant to their identity. This second point is quite important because, as I mentioned earlier, deaf people have constructed their identity and culture around Epée and his followers, who helped educate the deaf and initiate ideas of deaf identity and thus of deaf history.

Back to the first point about prehistory: in a related point, the determination of where we place the 'beginning' of our history (is there such a thing as a 'beginning' to history in general?) also shows our values and priorities. In terms of deaf history, there was one predecessor to Epée: Pedro Ponce de Leon. Pedro was a Benedictine monk - when he was introduced to two aristocratic brothers who were deaf-mutes, he realised that it was potentially possible to adapt the monastic signs that he employed to create a rudimentary manual language that could be used in communication with the two brothers. Pedro taught the brothers Spanish, Latin, and Greek and, interestingly enough, he also taught them to speak enough in order to be able to avail themselves of the sacrament of confession.***

Why wasn't Pedro considered the 'beginning' of deaf history, then? The answer is straightforward, I think. Pedro's work with the two brothers was a one-off occurrence, whereas Epée's methods were developed and designed for wide dissemination and were also accessible, as evidenced by the popularity of Epée's school for budding teachers of the deaf: many of the first teachers of the deaf across France and Europe (excepting Britain)**** were the disciples of Epée himself. Instead of considering the deaf as individual cases or within a meritocracy (which is implied by the fact that Pedro taught two aristocrats), Epée assumed that any deaf child or person had the ability and intelligence to learn languages. This ideology lent itself naturally, I think, to the idea that Epée should be considered the beginning of deaf history, or at least of 'proper' deaf history, as everything BE is prehistory.

Before we move on to the second of the three points above, let us consider the issue of prehistory more closely, as it's closely linked to the second point of parallel histories. The designation of deaf history before c. 1760 as being BE, or prehistory, clearly demarcates what is generally considered to be the 'modern' period as also belonging to deaf history. This suggests that the period BE is not only prehistory, but is 'ancient' or 'medieval' history, and that this prehistory is not important or worth examining because we already know what happened 'back then'. Deaf people were oppressed, were called nasty names like deaf-mutes, and weren't considered important enough to be included in historical records. There's a reason the medieval period is called the medieval period, people!

This is, obviously, an unfortunately simplistic (and pessimistic) view of deaf prehistory. One has to wonder if this indicates a feeling within the deaf community that the period BE is such a 'long' one that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to develop an identity (or impose one?) that takes prehistory into account. The fact that the deaf identity may be said to begin in the 18th century must certainly have helped to create a clearly developed identity, one that can be linked to historical events, particularly as we have historical records and artefacts from deaf people in the 18th century onwards, which helps to make this particular historical period more tangible and meaningful to the deaf community. I can certainly understand why references to deaf-mutes being let off for murders because they're considered incapable of understanding right from wrong in medieval legal records don't have the same attraction as the writings of Ferdinand Berthier, the development of the Hartford School for the Deaf by Gallaudet and Clerc, and so on.

However, this does not mean that the medieval period is irrelevant. The fact that deaf-mutes are mentioned in legal records (and I'm certain they're mentioned elsewhere, of course!) doesn't mean that they're irrelevant to historians. One would think that these legal references would be seen in a positive light: they certainly demonstrate that medieval understandings of deafness (and disability in general) may very well have been quite sensible and practical in taking real-life considerations into account instead of painting the deaf (or disabled) with a single brush.

This understanding of medieval history as belonging to prehistory suggests that there's more than the creation myth at play here. With the period AE covering what is considered the 'modern' period, it raises questions of modernity v pre-modernity, and also suggests that there is a difficulty in understanding prehistory on its own terms, that deaf people and those who work in disability history assume that since models have been constructed that explain the disabled experience in the period AE/modern period, these models must thus be applicable to the prehistoric period as well. We have a paradox here. If modern models can be applied to the prehistoric period, then is the period BE (before Epée) really be 'prehistory'? At the same time, the clear marking of Epée as the beginning of deaf history strongly indicates that the period before Epée is marked off and cannot be understood according to the models, ideas, and theories developed by Epée and his disciples and those who have come after them up to the present day.

In dealing with this paradox presented to us by prehistory, does this mean that I, as a scholar working in medieval disability history, am actually working in 'disability history', or is this a misnomer, a glossing-over of this paradox? Of course, the phrase itself implies that there was an understanding that disability meant more than just a physical or mental impairment in the medieval period, that it could constitute metaphorical and epistemological ideas and concepts such as 'disablity history'. For them, the period they lived in constituted the 'modern' period, thus it was not 'prehistory', yet the demarcation established by the 'creation myth' discussed earlier relegates medieval people to a lower rung on the totem pole below modernity. Granted, this is not a novel concept, as our understanding of history presumes that it is linear to a degree, that events follow one another and that the further we go back into the past, the higher the probability of finding less historical evidence. This argument conveniently leaves out the issues of interpretation. For instance, I can't very well call deaf people 'deaf' - they were, more often than not, referred to as 'deaf-mutes' or 'deaf and dumb', to name two terms. This difference in terminology does not necessarily mean that the medieval understanding of deafness is 'inferior' to the modern one: it simply indicates that the medieval period had different priorities and that in order to glean out the references to deaf people (and disabled people in general), we must learn to accept the medieval understanding of disability for what it is instead of attempting to subsume it within a modern framework.

This is a roundabout way of saying that the only way to resolve the paradox, or at least set it aside for the moment, is to understand the medieval worldview on its own terms instead of attempting to link it to a modern one in order to 'better' facilitate interpretation.

Now the question is: Are we dealing with history or prehistory? On one level, I would argue that we are dealing with prehistory in terms of medieval disability history in the sense that this period has not been considered a fruitful or even relevant one for the purposes of disability history in general until quite recently. It has also been argued that this period is distinctly different from the modern period, given the different models, interpretations and understandings of disability in the medieval and modern periods, so any attempt to 'link' up the two periods or demonstrate that the medieval period has any relevance to the modern period in terms of disability is useless. This argument has been used largely because there is, again, very little actual work done in this period: the assumption is that since there's little work done already, it must be pointless, ergo why bother attempting to disprove the point?

And, of course, what's the point in developing a parallel history when the 'main' history has already been done? We know that the medieval period was a nasty time for the disabled - what more needs to be done in terms of the medieval period? This will form the basis for the next post in this series, which will be coming in the next few days, so be sure to check back!

*For you non-Latinists, 'Let there be silence!' It's a play on the famous command by God in Genesis in the Latin Vulgate: Fiat lux! or 'Let there be light!'

**To simplify matters, Epée did not invent sign language. That was invented independently of him by the deaf who formed a community in Paris. We know this sign language existed before Epée, as Pierre Desloges describes some of the signs in this system in his book, published in 1794. What Epée did was he created 'methodical signs'. In effect, these signs conveyed French on the hands: methodical signs were thus used as a teaching tool to teach the deaf in Epée's classes the alphabet, French grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Again, this is a very simplified explanation and is in no way meant to be authoritative.

***Inheritance laws, to be quite simplistic about it, generally presumed that the heir was capable of speech, as he or she had to be able to understand contracts and be capable of managing his or her estate(s), which required the ability to speak and comprehend speech; the ability to comprehend written vernaculars or Latin was not necessarily as relevant. Why this should be applicable to confession as well, I'm not certain, but I know that Eaquae Legit has found references to deafness in terms of confession in her research already.

****The Braidwoods developed their own system for educating the deaf. This is why British Sign Language (BSL) is quite different from French Sign Language (FSL) and its descendants, which includes American Sign Language (ASL). It appears that the Anglo-French rivalry extended to the education of the deaf as well.

Disability and begging

2008-07-10T16:30:00.005-06:00

[NOTE: This is an extremely long post, in excess of 1800 words. If anyone knows how to get the post summary feature (i.e. where you can have a Read More link to the rest of the post) on to this blog, let me know - many thanks in advance! Greg]

Christian Cripple here, folks.

It took a while, but I finally managed to get Joe and Tom to stop drinking long enough for Joe to sober up and cart me over to the nearest keyboard to write out this post, which comes hot on the heels of my first post a while ago.

The Internets is a fascinating place. In fact, I just came across something called the 'BBC' which apparently has lots of 'news articles' on things to do with the 'UK', whatever the heck that is. Still trying to figure out where the heck they put jolly olde England on the map. Apparently there's a really big 'continent' or two in the way or something.

At any rate, I ran across two articles discussing a disabled beggar in India, here and here. First of all, what the heck is a 'bank' and how do I get into one? ~~Secondly, how the heck did this woman amass 200 pounds of coins?! I'd kill for 200 pounds!~~ Edit: Turns out they're referring to the unit of weight not the monetary 'pound'. Crap. Thank you, Tom. Guess your 'scholasticism' is good for a thing or two, after all.

Now, isn't it interesting that the writers only mention Ms Das' disability as a result of an attack of polio in the second article, at the beginning, and not at all in the first? Her need for begging appears to have been caused as a result of this polio attack, so why shouldn't this information have been considered relevant for the purposes of the first article as well? It's possible that Ms Das' polio may not have been severe enough to be obvious to people, yet one must wonder to what extent she may or may not have relied upon her disability to solicit donations or alms.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing that disabled people who are forced to beg should rely solely upon their disability in soliciting alms. However, this does raise a question of what society considers people with disabilities to be.

Are they drains on society because they're not 'normal', require 'extra' services, and don't contribute to society at large? Are they considered in a more positive light, in that their experiences as disabled people can be used to their advantage - for instance, it's eminently possible that disabled people are creative and adaptable, as they have to recognise that they are part of a minority in that society is designed for what it considers normal, average people. The very definition of 'disabled' presumes that one is not part of this 'normal average', if you will.

At the same time, where exactly does this idea that the disabled can or should be lumped in with the poor come from? I know that in my experience, I can't exactly do much, being a cripple and all - just look at my picture on the left, people! - but I can beg. However, I can rationalise this by the argument that I represent a tangible means for Christians to demonstrate charity: by giving me alms, they show that they are good Christians and follow the teachings of Jesus in caring for those who are sick and destitute. ... Hm. I suppose I just answered my own question to a degree.

I say 'to a degree' because the answer I gave is religious in nature - there certainly have to be other answers to the idea that the disabled are part of the poor in society. Or is it possible that modern conceptions of the 'disabled poor' stem from my time, from the idea that the 'disabled poor' should be interpreted in terms of a religious framework? Granted, a religious framework is in and of itself attractive, because it also provides room for incorporating arguments of morality within itself, but this is to conflate religion and morality. Is it the same thing if a donor says that he is giving me alms out of religious duty or obligation, or because he is doing so out of a sense of morality?

To the first, one may argue that this is not the most honest of answers, because we are following an obligation. However, this would be simplifying the issue of religion. While it can be said that we are born into a religion - I was born to Catholic parents, after all - it is still a choice to follow the tenets of said religion. ~~No kidding! Cripple's a huge fan of Innocent III and his smiting of the Albigenesian heresy a few decades back!~~ Sorry about that. Stupid Tom went and re-introduced himself to some mead. ~~I did NOT!~~ Shaddup, Tom.

Anyways, as I was saying, it is still our choice to follow the tenets of our religion. In that sense, giving to the poor, disabled or not, is not necessarily an obligation, but more of an agreement. By following Christianity, or whichever religion one follows, one agrees to the tenets of the religion itself, so it is not necessarily a one-sided conversation here.

However, this does not quite resolve the issue of morality, particularly separate of religion. This point is especially important, as there is no mention of religion in the two articles I mentioned earlier in this post. (Thank God for this 'keyboard' - I couldn't imagine dictating this to a scribe - after all, it's the fourteenth century, not the tenth!)

Let us examine the question of morality from the perspective of Ms Das first. She states that she "knew one day that [she] would grow old and have diseases, so [she] was prudent and saved for [her] pension." When we think of beggars with alms, we tend to assume that they live a hand-to-mouth existence; that they beg because they have an immediate need for money. Here, Ms Das has taken a long-term view of her situation and understood her disability as one that would exclude her from being able to hold down a steady job that would pay her well and, hopefully, provide benefits of some sort as well.

Perhaps this story is not extraordinary for the fact that Ms Das is disabled, but rather for the fact that she persevered at her 'job', if you will, because she took a long-term view of it and understood it as a job in the fullest sense of the word. She went to work, worked, came home, and did it again the next day. She lived off her earnings and saved what she didn't spend. Is this so different from 'proper' jobs in society today? I'm not saying we should all go out and start begging - that'd severely cut down on my clientele, for one thing!

It does, however, bring up the point that the disabled are perceived as being individuals with short-term goals: their goal is to get from one day to the next, to manage to survive another day with their disability (or disabilities). This is a negative and pessimistic view, one that fails to take into account the disabled person's understanding of and feelings about his or her situation in life: the articles about Ms Das seem to suggest that she was at least content with her job - it was something for her to do every day. She had a clear goal in mind: one must certainly wonder what ran through the minds of those who donated some alms her way. Did they think that she was a nuisance, a drain upon society, someone who didn't deserve their charity? Or did they give her alms just to make her go away and stop 'bothering' or 'pestering' them? Did any of them consider that this was potentially her job, that she was a person who was capable of - and had - concrete goals and purposes in life? After all, do we not all work to secure our future? Ms Das simply did it in a way that society considers 'inappropriate'.

Now, the same question - that of morality - from the perspective of the donors themselves. This is not discussed at all in the articles: the closest we get is a discussion of how Ms Das can be used as an example that one "can save even if [they] earn a pittance." This is an interesting comment, because it implies that this remarkable woman is remarkable precisely because of her talents both in amassing this sizeable fortune and in managing it shrewdly. The comment itself suggests an almost too-late appreciation for this woman's talents, and a recognition that her talents could perhaps have been put to better use, if only someone had recognised them earlier.

More than anything, the absence of morality in these articles on the part of the donors seems to suggest that donating alms is seen as a rote action, something that we do because it's socially 'proper', whether that's contributing to charities or giving directly to beggars or panhandlers, however we want to describe them.

Also, the mentions of the ability to "send in account payee cheques in [Ms Das'] name" to her bank and the outpouring of people "offering financial help to Ms Das after her story first appeared earlier this week" are interesting. Does society feel this moral need to help the poor and the disabled only when it can put a tangible face to the idea of 'the poor' and 'the disabled'? I'm certainly a person, and so is Joe ~~AND ME!~~...sigh. And, yes, even Tom. I have goals. I have expectations. I have dreams. Now, maybe they're not as grand as yours are, but they're goals, expectations, and dreams nonetheless - they're mine. They're grand to me.

However, the idea of 'financial help' is interesting. Is it only possible to offer Ms Das, and people like me, Christian Cripple, financial help? Society is composed of networks, networks in which financial help is given and shared, certainly, but other kinds of 'help' are offered as well that are not necessarily financial. It may be moral, religious, collective or personal, to condense non-financial sorts of 'help' into four admittedly very broad terms. The offering of financial help carries with it the implication that society's responsibility to the poor and the disabled ends there: it is up to the person in question to determine his or her future. This is quite ironic, as it comes up against the idea that since the poor and disabled live a hand-to-mouth existence, they must be incapable, one way or another, of long-term goals, which suggests that it is society's responsibility to provide guidance. Which is it?

More than anything, these two articles demonstrate the conflicting attitude society has towards the disabled, especially if and when they're lumped in with the poor. Should the disabled be lumped in with the poor, however one defines that particular term - the poor? Or should they be considered on their own terms, or is it acceptable to lump them in with the poor - or any other socially-defined group - when appropriate?

Is this conflicting attitude perhaps a legacy of the medieval period, or does it go deeper than that?

Does this mean I'm running in the presidential election now?

2008-07-10T09:18:00.002-06:00

(Courtesy of Jeremy Young via In The Middle)

I'm famous - I was quoted by John McCain in a presidential debate!

Okay, not really. Technically it's an, um, "presidential debate" over at Progressive Historians.

McCain: I'm an old codger. I don't like this new Internets stuff. I prefer things from a long, long time ago, like Greg Carrier's article at In The Middle on Medieval Disability. Greg gives an excellent overview of that emerging field of historical inquiry.

As JJC writes at ITM: "So ... McCain gets the medieval vote?"

Many thanks, Jeremy!

WAY before Columbus....

2008-07-09T19:38:00.005-06:00

Only a medievalist would get the humour present in the final frame of this strip. =)

*For you non-medievalists, St Brendan, if the chronicles are to be believed, sailed from Ireland to Canada in the sixth century.

A question of life or death?

2008-07-09T12:24:00.002-06:00

I just came across a survey conducted by Disaboom, the "first interactive online community dedicated to improving the way people with disabilities live their lives."

The survey, which polled 1000 Americans, proclaims that 52% of Americans would rather be dead than live with a severe disability, namely one "that forever alters your ability to live an independent life."

This survey irritates the heck out of me for two reasons, and not because 52% of Americans would rather be dead than be severely disabled.

First of all, even though the press release states that various demographic factors were taken into account, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that based on 1000 responses, 52% of Americans would prefer to be dead.

Secondly, the survey question only allowed for two choices: living with a severe disability or death. The nature of the 'severe' disability was not defined or explained beyond the implied statement that it would negatively affect the respondent's quality of life, nor did it take into account the fact that it is certainly possible to live a full life with a disability, a point that the founder of Disaboom (quite ironically) makes a few paragraphs down in the press release. I wonder how he would have felt if he had been called up and asked to select between only these two options: life with a severe disability or death.

I'm quite happy where I am, thank you very much. I probably don't qualify as having a 'severe' disability according to the criteria set out by the survey organisers, but still...what a depressing survey to come across.

Captioning bloopers: Edward I of England a sot?

2008-07-05T08:00:00.000-06:00

Courtesy of Monarchy with David Starkey, namely in reference to memorialising Edward I's wars against Scotland:

"The following inscription was placed upon Edward [I]'s tomb: malius sotorum."

I'm pretty sure that should have been malleus Scotorum. Unless, you know, Edward was really a girly king or something, which really makes you wonder what Edward II was perceived as during his reign. Or Edward III....

Deaf-mutism: the experience

2008-07-04T08:00:00.001-06:00

[Image credit: Jesus Curing a Deaf-Mute, courtesy of ARTStor]

I recently watched the French film Ridicule.

The film focuses on a baron, Gregoire Ponceludon de Malavoy, who travels to Versailles in 1783 to get funding to drain swamps on his estates. He quickly learns that wit opens doors at Versailles, and he has it in spades.

What is remarkable about this film, though, is the presence of a minor character, Paul, who is a deaf-mute. In fact, he is described in the film as an idiot and half-wit far more than he is called a deaf-mute.

At one point in the film, he is sent off to Paris to be taught by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée. Later in the film, he reappears at Versailles with Epée and several of Epée's other students. The party are openly ridiculed by the aristocrats who have gathered for the demonstration that Epée is putting on to prove that deaf-mutes are intelligent and are indeed capable of learning language and of communicating with society. Epée has them demonstrate their intelligence by answering questions posed to them by the audience, with him as the intepreter.

The scene is quite short: only three questions are asked. One aristocrat asks what the purpose of a violin is; another asks if the deaf-mutes can tell time. They answer these questions ably, then a woman asks if they are content with their lot in life. Epée puts the question to the group, and they suddenly engage in a conversation amongst themselves. After a few moments, one deaf-mute responds to Epée, who chuckles. The aristocrats are dumbfounded: they have no idea what's going on. Epée turns to the audience and tells them that he cannot give them an answer: what they have signed is untranslatable, as it's a play on signs.

The aristocrats take this at face value, and one final question is posed: "How do you say bravo?" Malavoy quips, "Like this!" and rises to applaud the deaf-mutes and their teacher.

The fact that Epée couldn't translate the answer to spoken French is intriguing. It reminds us that there is still a difference between the hearing and deaf experiences; this distinction is perhaps more pronounced in the medieval and early modern periods than it is today. Many deaf-mutes in Epée's time spent years without education of any sort until they were put under his charge and tutelage: how could they express the deaf experience to a hearing audience? Perhaps more importantly, how could they explain and describe their experience as deaf-mutes to themselves after they had learned French Sign Language?

How did people imagine what it was like to be disabled in earlier epochs? Even though deaf-mutes aren't frequently found in the legal records I'm using as the basis of my MA thesis, they're still there. The fact that they're being let off without prejudice for murder because they're incapable of malicious thoughts demonstrates that there is some degree of imagination here. What does a deaf-mute think and feel? Of course, medieval jurists couldn't go up to a deaf-mute and ask him or her what he or she thought and knew: this was impossible. They had to imagine what it may have been like to be a deaf-mute. Even I have to imagine what it must have been like to be a deaf-mute in the medieval (or early modern) period.

I had a very good discussion with Rei about this not too long ago, namely about going from hearing nothing to hearing something, and I found that I couldn't explain the experience itself, even though I experience it twice a day, once when I put my implants on and again when I take them off before bed. I had to resort to a comparison of sorts - I asked him to imagine what it was like to come out of a quite dark room and be assaulted with light. I have had this particular experience myself, and I find that it's the only way I can explain what it is like for me to go from hearing nothing without my implants to suddenly hearing things when I put them on, and vice-versa for when I take them off.

Perhaps Plato was on to something here with his cave allegory?....

Captioning bloopers: Euro 2008

2008-07-03T08:00:00.001-06:00

When Spain won the Euro 2008 final this past Sunday, during the medal presentation, the commentators were listing the teams Spain had defeated in the competition.

Instead of 'Greece', the captioning read 'Grease'.

Somehow I don't think the Euro 2008 championships will ever make it big on Broadway....

Support services at conferences

2008-07-02T08:00:00.001-06:00

A question for you readers.

The conference's been splendid so far (I'm assuming - I did write this post before leaving for Vancouver, after all.). All events so far have been captioned (this I knew in advance), and all the workshops and plenary events on the schedule for the remainder of the conference will be captioned as well (ditto). There are also sound loops for those who employ them, as well as sign language interpreters (ditto yet again). This conference is a wonderful model of accessibility.

In fact, it's gotten me thinking about academic conferences that I've attended, and will attend in the future. To what extent should academic conferences be required to provide support services? Now, I'm not talking about just myself, but in general, whether it be a deaf academic, a blind one, a hard of hearing one, or one with mobility issues, and so on.

For instance, would having real-time captioning for plenary lectures be beneficial for everyone, especially if the lecture is given in a large hall or ballroom (a la Kalamazoo)? What about speakers who are visually impaired or in wheelchairs? (I have seen some congress attendees in wheelchairs the past two years, I should note.)

The reason I'm interested in these questions is because we're told that academics are seeking knowledge, to expand knowledge. That should apply to academics who are disabled as well. Now, I should note that I've had a wonderful experience with the organisers of the Kalamazoo conference in terms of ensuring that I have accommodations, but I do wonder how many disabled academics decline to attend conferences because they're either not sure how to go about securing accommodations for these events, or because they're worried that they'll be seen as a burden or as people demanding special treatment. I'm not saying that all academics feel this way, but I do wonder how many disabled academics feel excluded from conferences and the like because they don't necessarily actively consider accessibility issues in terms of disabled academics who may be interested in attending.

I realise that support services cost money - what doesn't? But that argument makes out disabled academics to be second-class citizens in a sense, because conferences themselves cost money to organise and run for 'normal', abled academics just as much as they would for disabled academics.

To what extent should academic conferences be expected to go in terms of providing support services for disabled academics, and to what extent should disabled academics themselves be required to go to in terms of helping set up support services at conferences they're interested in attending?

What do you think, readers?

2008-07-01T08:03:00.000-06:00

Chase here, folks!

Woo!

Greg's gone to Vancouver!

I get the rest of the week off!

I can be a dog!

No more getting up early to go to work! Mind you, I still have to get up early to have breakfast - must keep a regular schedule in respects to food, of course! But after I eat, I can go back to bed! Either that, or I can go pester Dad, see if he'll get off the computer long enough to take me out to go play fetch or go for a walk, or, even better, both!

Don't get me wrong, of course. I love working, especially when people compliment me about how cute and smart I am. Why they direct the comments at Greg instead of me, I have no idea, though. After all, I need to put all of my training to use!

Just not this week - woo!

Now excuse me while I go see if someone's around here whom I can pester about taking me out to play fetch or a walk, or both.

Vancouver bound!

2008-07-01T08:01:00.001-06:00

I'm off to Vancouver for the IFHOH Congress* this week: the posts for this week have been written up in advance and will be going up on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

This congress is a bit of a big deal, as it's only held once every four years (like the Olympics, World Cup, and Euros, although it's not nearly as famous as said events, sadly). It's also the first time this congress is being held outside of Europe, and you can't get much better than Vancouver, although I suspect people from the Centre of the Universe** might disagree.

This conference is extra-special because it's really two conferences in one. It's the annual national conference for the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association as well, so it's really the CHHA-IFHOH Congress.

And the best thing about it? Rei was kind enough to direct me to the Granville Island Brewery, a microbrewery on Granville Island, one of the best and popular areas in the Lower Mainland.***

I am so there.

*International Federation of Hard of Hearing Persons.

**Canadians will get this reference to Toronto, Ontario. And if you're not a Canadian, but you got the reference anyways, props to you!

***Another reference for you Canadians!

Happy Canada Day!

2008-07-01T08:00:00.001-06:00

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

In honour of Canada's 141st birthday, here's an obscure historical fact that you may find interesting.

Technically speaking, Canada is still a dominion.

The Constitution Act of 1982, which repatriated the British North America Act* never discussed Canada's status as a dominion. A constitutional amendment would be required to modify or abolish Canada's status as a dominion.

*Technically, there are twenty British North America Acts dating from 1867 to 1975. The most famous of them is the 1867 version, which was (and still is) the basis for the Canadian constitution and saw the creation of the Dominion of Canada.

Captioning bloopers: WWII

2008-06-30T08:00:00.000-06:00

From a course on modern Europe, specifically from a lecture on WWII:

Germany waged submarine warfare during the war, especially in an attempt to prevent supplies from North America reaching British shores.

Except, instead of 'submarine warfare', the captioning read submarijuana warfare.

Guess Germany not only lost WWII, but also the war on drugs.

Ouch.

Foucault

2008-06-29T08:00:00.000-06:00

A question for you readers.

Is it wrong to detest Foucault?

Don't get me wrong. Theory is certainly important in our field. We can't do whatever the hell we want (in theory - ha!), or at least we can't do whatever the hell we want without at least showing what we're ~~dismantling because it's garbage~~ challenging in the first place, otherwise we have no sense of how the field is moving forward. That, and we don't have a sense of how we, as academics, are developing, changing, and even challenging our preconceptions and assumptions that we have in our work and that we make about our sources and the field in general.

What galls me about Foucault, however, is how people seem to accept Foucault as the be-all and end-all of just about everything. I am not saying that Foucault isn't useful, but we need to consider exactly how we're using him in the first place. I'm pretty sure ~~nearly~~ every book and article I've read for the historiographical chapter makes reference to Foucault's ideas about madness in the medieval period. No one seems to be willing to explain exactly how Foucault's relevant to the medieval period, seeing as the stultifera navis (ship of fools) which he expounds upon extensively and in (admittedly) poetic language in the opening chapter to his History of Madness didn't actually exist in reality.*

Part of the reason why Foucault has been (mis)used in so many fields is because his works don't necessarily tell us what to do. They reveal things that we've always known about, but didn't necessarily know how to formulate in the first place, but don't actually tell us what to do with the structures and concepts that Foucault has revealed and dissected in his works. It's been left to us to figure that out, and I can't help but wonder if we're indeed taking Foucault too far.

That, and how can anyone tolerate reading paragraphs that are essentially very, very long run-on sentences? Okay, I'm getting petty here, but still. He does hook you early on, though, as anyone who's read Discipline and Punish well knows. Poor Damien. (Or Damiens, depending on your preferred spelling.)

*Okay, not everyone agrees with Foucault (thankfully!). See especially the works of H.C. Erik Midelfort (A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany) and Peter Sedgwick (Psycho Politics).

**So Nineteen Eighty-Four, I know. And if you don't get the reference, please do read the book. You'll know it when you see it; it's in Part II.

Medieval support services?

2008-06-28T22:10:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking a bit about my experience in university with obtaining support services, particularly in terms of how support services were organised in the medieval period.

Scholars have emphasised the family and the community as the basic support network available to people in the medieval period. What exactly does 'support network' mean in terms of the disabled experience, though? It's easy enough to assume (rightly so, I suspect) that the family would have been the primary support network for a disabled person, particularly parents and/or guardians. This support network would have been supplemented by siblings, cousins, and relatives.

This is where the problem comes in. Do we know that extended family members were part of 'family' support networks for the disabled? Or was the support service itself largely, if not exclusively, restricted to parents and immediate family members such as siblings?

Also, the assumption of the existence of a support network raises two points that have not necessarily been considered:

That the support network was understood as a support network by those who participated in it in the first instance, and
That the disabled person was effectively marginalised in terms of his or her role in the network, that he or she was a passive actor, rather than an active one.

The first point is relevant because it forces us to examine not only perceptions of the support network in the medieval period, but also to examine, wherever possible, the motivations of those involved in the networks themselves. Were the 'supporters' themselves altruistic, or did they engage in networks only when there was a tangible or strong possibility of benefits down the road?

This leads us into the second point, especially. If disabled people were passive actors in the networks that supported them, then we must consider just how large and sophisticated the support network itself was in the first place. If the disabled person was clearly passive in that he or she would not be able to contribute meaningfully to the community and society at large, or was perceived to be unable to do so, then how willing would the family, and the community at large, have been in terms of either integrating the disabled person into the pre-existing support networks within the community or in establishing a new one with the express purpose of supporting and caring for the disabled person?

We must also consider whether these questions were answered differently in different circumstances, particularly in terms of rural communities and urban areas, and in terms of the poor and those who were well-off, or at least had fair landholdings (and potentially family connections within the gentry or the nobility).

Was the disabled experience an experience that only the disabled themselves experienced, or did those around them come to experience the 'disabled experience' themselves to some degree as well?

Politically incorrect history?

2008-06-27T13:57:00.004-06:00

The previous post got me thinking about descriptors used to describe disabilities, both in the medieval and modern periods.

Today, everything has to be politically correct: we have the hearing-impaired, the visually-impaired, the physically-impaired, and so on.

These terms suggest that the person in question is totally impaired. In my case, with the term 'hearing-impaired', this is true: without my cochlear implants, I'm utterly, totally deaf. However, I have many friends who have varying degrees of hearing loss, but not to the point of being completely deaf. To apply the term 'hearing-impaired' to them, again, suggests that they're completely impaired, or at least severely impaired in their hearing abilities, which is not necessarily the case.

Also, in terms of which persona should these terms be applied? Again, in terms of my experience, when I don't have my implants on, I'm completely deaf, but when I'm wearing the implants, I do hear - albeit nowhere near as well as 'normal' hearing people do, mind. Am I 'hearing-impaired' in both cases, or should a proper distinction be made? I may not be the best example here, obviously. Many of my friends who are hard of hearing have hearing aids. Are they 'hearing-impaired' or 'hard of hearing' only when they're not wearing the hearing aids, or when they're wearing them, or all the time, regardless of whether they're wearing the hearing aids or not?

The need to be politically correct strikes me as being odd in this respect. In our desire to be politically correct, we're seemingly (or are we?) reducing the range of words we employ to describe and explain disabilities and the disabled experience. Now, while I certainly can't tell you exactly what it's like to be totally deaf, I should still be able to explain what my disability is.

However, I still have to be careful, as I often find I have to distinguish between 'Deaf' and 'deaf'. In layman's terms, 'Deaf' refers to those who are deaf who participate in the deaf community and employ American Sign Language (ASL) as their primary language. A 'deaf' person is one who is not part of this community, but prefers to use some form of English (oral, Signing Exact English, etc.) as their primary means of communication. People who are 'deaf' also have hearing aids or cochlear implants. (Please keep in mind that this is a very simplified summary of the distinctions made between Deaf and deaf people and should not be taken as being authoritative in any way, shape, or form.)

The most striking thing, to me, in delineating the differences is the need to set off Deaf and deaf, either tonally or with quotes.

Every now and then, in my reading, I come across an author who discusses disabilities in the medieval period and sets off the politically incorrect terms in quotes. For instance:

'idiot'
'deaf-mute'
'deaf and dumb'
'fool'
'madman'
'retard'
'imbecile'
'cripple'
'paralytic'
'mute'
'deaf-mute'

Is not this anachronistic? I very much doubt that John Ploughman or Aquinas would understand the modern terms that we employ today. Perhaps they'd even find our terms politically incorrect and/or offensive, for all we know.

We'd like to think that we've come a long way from the 'big, bad Dark Ages' to shining modernity, where disabled people are treated equitably. Such a theory is Whiggish* and fails to recognise that medieval society understood disabled people in its own terms, not ours; any application of modern terms on the medieval period is thus politically incorrect.

Should not we be understanding medieval society on its own terms, instead of worrying about how its conceptions of disability, or of anything, for that matter, may be potentially offensive to modern sensibilities? That's the key there: modern sensibilties. There's a reason why the medieval period is not the modern period.

And now I'm off to see if any more authors on my reading list set off medieval, politically 'incorrect' terms in their articles.

*Readers who are not be familiar with the term 'Whig history' may find Herbert Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History useful. In essence, the Whig interpretation is teleological: humanity is inevitably progressing towards better things, which means that the modern period is the best in history up to now; previous epochs are of lesser quality the further we get from modernity.

Euphemisms

2008-06-26T19:51:00.002-06:00

Courtesy of Eaquae Legit:

A new BBC reality show is coming out this summer. It's called Britain's Missing Top Model. All the contestants - women, I should note - are disabled.

The title itself is fascinating. What exactly is it trying to convey? Hopefully not that the show's R-rated. Either that, or the models are all headless. Wouldn't that be a fantasy/horror show rather than a reality one, though?

In short, why the euphemism of sorts? Why not have Britain's Disabled Top Model?

I'll leave you, dear readers, to figure that one out! Enjoy!

'That's not how history goes!'

2008-06-24T10:02:00.008-06:00

Granted, this Sheldon comic is about Philip II of Spain and Elizabeth ~~Regina~~ Rex, but it's still amusing.

What would have happened if the Armada had emerged victorious? Ah, the 'what if' moments of history....

(Incidentally, Elizabeth Rex is the title of a play [also turned into a film] by Timothy Findley; it challenges notions of gender, given the comment that Elizabeth was often said to have ruled like a man.)

Salvum me fac, Obama(???)

2008-06-23T01:52:00.006-06:00

Even though I'm a Canadian, I would like to see Obama win the US election this coming November.

This, however, is just ridiculous. It's a site that debates whether or not Obama is the Messiah. Now, it's all a tongue-in-cheek exercise, but it's still ridiculous, yet strangely amusing.

(I especially like The Transfiguration.* And, yes, I know I egregiously ripped off the Psalms in the post title.)

*The Transfiguration refers to an event in the Bible. Jesus took Peter, James and John to the top of a mountain where he appeared to them alongside Moses and Elijah.

Summa Contra Idiotas

2008-06-23T01:35:00.006-06:00

Damn it, people!

I am not a drunkard!

Look at my picture to the left! Look closely! I am not holding a bottle! Well, okay, an ink bottle, but it's not a bottle of alcohol! I am being inspired by God Himself and His angels! There's a reason I'm the Angelic Doctor! I can assure you that I am not 'hitting the bottle', whatever that means, in an attempt to have something called a 'hallucinatory experience' in which I 'see' angels and be inspired.

Look at my Summa! How, pray tell, is that the result of a drunken mind?!

I don't deserve sainthood for my Summa Theologica; I deserve sainthood for dealing with ignorant illiterati like Christian Cripple and the so-called 'deaf mute' Greg.

~~Go away, Joe. I'm out of mead. Kalamazoo only rolls around once a year. If you really need some, go see Bonaventure. He's out at Leeds, wherever that is.~~

Christian Cripple

2008-06-23T00:58:00.002-06:00

Christian Cripple here. Sorry for taking so long to get here. Stupid Joe - the guy who pushes me around in this here wheelbarrow - went and blew all the alms I gathered last week on drink, so we didn't exactly get here very quickly. And by 'us', I mean 'Joe'. I ned to make sure Joe stays away from this fella named Tom, who lurks around those parts here somewhere. Apparently Tom's big on drink because it lets him pretend he's crazy or something.

At any rate, I heard about this blog here, and thought it'd be interesting to come down and check it out, see what all the fuss was about. In looking around, I found this. This utter ponce, Greg, presumes to speak for me and my experiences as a cripple in ... what year is it again, Joe? ... 1330? Thank you, Joe. 1330! And the ridiculous thing is this Greg presumes to be a deaf-mute! Well, if he's a deaf-mute, then I'm not a cripple, and since I'm clearly one, he's not a deaf-mute.

Now that that's settled, on to more serious matters. ~~Dickie birds!~~ Please forgive Joe. He's still recovering from all the mead he had last night. That, and he's discovered something called the 'internet'.

What Greg wrote was complete nonsense. For one thing, what the heck's a 'socio-cultural model'?! Sounds heretical, if you ask me, especially seeing as there's no mention of God at all. Well, I suppose he does mention God when he talks about sin, but how about talking about Him without bringing sin into the equation?

After all, God is capable of miracles. Why, only last month Isabella, the blind girl from down the road, went to Canterbury with her parents. She and her parents prayed for a long time at the shrine of the saintly Thomas Becket and he was moved, moved enough, in fact, to intercede on Isabella's behalf with God Himself to procure a miracle whereby her infirmity was cured. Why, yes, she was cured! Right there, in front of dozens of witnesses, she suddenly realised she could see! And that isn't all! She was able to name all the colours correctly when she saw them. Why, one of the first things she saw when she realised she could see was an elderly woman's brown dress, and she correctly identified it as being brown - truly a miracle, as she was blind from birth! I mean, heck, she could name her blues from her yellows from her greens mere moments after being cured! If that isn't a honest to God genuine miracle, then I don't know what is!

And you know the silly thing? Someone accused her of faking her recovery because of her ability to name the colours instantly. Silly person - he should've realised that God gave her the knowledge of the colours when He cured her! ...Oh, wait. Isn't that what He does with deaf-mutes so they know how to speak and comprehend words?

Hm. How did she know the colours?

Eh, not important! What's important is that she was cured! A miracle! Now only if I could keep Joe here sober enough to take me down to Canterbury.... Sigh. Some day....

At any rate, God put me here for a reason, see. In His infinite wisdom, He has given His people infirmities to remind us that this is but the world before the next, and that we must redeem ourselves of Original Sin in order to enter Paradise. I'm here to remind people that they should practise Christian charity and give me, a deserving member of the poor, alms. They should also be glad that I am suffering this burden on their behalf while they are free of physical infirmities. After all, does not God strike down people with infirmities in the Bible, and does not Christ cure deaf-mutes, lepers, the mad, and so on?

See, it's not a hard life for me, really. I have a role to play in society, and I'm treated well. After all, we also have Phillip here in town. He lives on the wrong side of the road, true, but he's still treated well. He's not right in the head - he has the falling sickness, but we still let him run around the town and the countryside as he pleases. If anything, it's a golden age for people like Phil and me nowadays. I wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to write a nice poem about Christendom fifty or sixty years from now and talk about how nice it was that we let people like Phil roam about the countryside and glean in the fields during the harvest.

Speaking of the falling sickness, Joe, you had better lay off that mead, unless you want to have that kind of falling sickness. Maybe that Tom is on to something there, after all....

Wheelock's Latin: The Musical!

2008-06-22T19:54:00.003-06:00

Yes.

Someone has actually taken that venerable primer of Latin, Wheelock, and transformed it into a musical, which is currently up to chapter twelve of Wheelock.

I give to you Wheelock's Latin: The Musical!

I, for one, am particularly intrigued as to how the author will deal with the ablative absolute.

Enjoy!

PS. Christian Cripple over there on the left? He'll be posting something in the next day or two.

Questions, questions....

2008-06-22T18:18:00.002-06:00

Lately, I've been coming to wonder what exactly blogging means to me, or, rather, to those around me.

Put it this way: I could easily have set up this blog in such a way that no one would have realised that I was deaf and had a service dog. That would, of course, have raised a set of issues for me: what would happen if I happened to meet people from the blogosphere in real life? How would I be perceived as a result of this 'omission' of what most people would, I presume, consider a fairly major part of my identity, the fact that I'm deaf?

On the other hand, what does my 'admission', if you will, of my deafness mean to the readers of this blog? Does it mean that my blog is more accessible for 'normal' people because it's in written format instead of spoken words?

Even if this is your first experience with a deaf person in academia, I don't know that you can call it a 'true' experience. Blogging, just as all other (electronic) written forms of communication, such as emails and MSN, places all of us on an equal footing to a degree. We all have basic computer skills in that we know how to function within the Internet, set up a blog, type, and the like. The fact that I'm deaf or you're hearing has nothing to do with any of this. However, if we meet in person, yes, my deafness and your hearing will come into play.*

What I'm getting at is the question of whether blogging is a benefit for me and for you, dear readers, in terms of my deafness. Does blogging really let me get my experiences as a deaf graduate student across to you in a meaningful way? Does reading about my attempts to translate the 'deaf experience' for this blog give you some sense, however meaningful, of what it means to be a deaf graduate student trying to find his way through academia?

*If you ever meet me in person, I have a device called a UbiDuo, which is basically a portable version of MSN. It's brilliant, but I suppose one could legitimately note that it's almost an extension of blogging. Just ask Eaquae Legit and reidemosthenes.

Foreign language troubles

2008-06-22T17:46:00.004-06:00

Four years ago, I went to the French department on campus to inquire into taking French.

For three weeks, I spoke to several professors in the department about the possibility. We discussed ways to adapt the course in light of the fact that I wouldn't be participating in the oral component.

I should note that I was working with the professors - I didn't simply show up and demand to be accommodated. For me, it was as much about accommodating the professors as it was them accommodating me.

Finally, when we thought we had sorted it out, I set up a meeting with the head of the French department to finalise arrangements. What I was going to propose was a 50/50 split between reading and writing: in the course, professors set optional reading and writing exercises, which would be made mandatory in my case as to make up for non-participation in the oral component.

As soon as introductions were made and we had sat down, the department head said: 'No. You may not take French. If you persist in this useless enterprise, I will tell whichever instructor you end up with to automatically fail you in the oral component. You must take it, and if you refuse to do so, you'll receive a zero for it.'

Needless to say, the meeting ended very shortly afterwards.

Ever since, I've been quite bitter about the whole experience. This was right about the time the university was lauding the graduation of a blind student who had majored in French language and literature. The department's feeble answer to that was that the blind student was able to fulfill all three components - reading, writing, and speaking while patently glossing over the fact that the student employed texts that had been converted into Braille for his use. (I'm not attempting to take anything away from this student's success, of course!)

Even when I applied to the university for my BA, I was told that if I desired, I could have ghost writers and/or ghost editors to help me with my assignments. The ghost writers/editors would be graduate students in English and would 'help' me (I didn't ask exactly what that meant, and even now, I don't really want to know, although I have strong suspicions) with my assignments.

This state of affairs is constantly maddening. People are often shocked when I tell them that Gallaudet University, the first university for the deaf in the world, followed all other 'normal' universities. What that meant was that students at Gallaudet were required to take Greek, Latin, and a modern foreign language in order to graduate: that meant that they had to learn to read and write Greek, Latin, and a modern foreign language on top of having strong skills in English. (Gallaudet began life as a liberal arts college.)*

How did we get from that to today? What happened to expecting that deaf people, if they wished, could learn to read and write languages other than English? Why shouldn't I be allowed to take up French and German? I'd be a pretty lousy medievalist if I only had Latin, but couldn't read squat in French and German - let's just say that a lot of what I want to work with is either in French and German, or is written about in journals and books written in French or German.

I very much doubt that Alain de Lille, Alcuin, Cicero, Silvestris, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure, Peter the Venerable, the popes, and everyone else who wrote in Latin in the medieval period will 'let me off easy' because I happen to be deaf. I'm pretty sure the same applies to writers who wrote (or write) in French and German.

So, what should I do? Any suggestions regarding taking up French (and, later, German) in terms of achieving, at least, a decent ability to read it (them)?

Or another way of looking at this: if a deaf student (or a student with any disability, really) came to you and told you that he or she wanted to become a medievalist, but would like to take up Latin and/or French and/or German because it's required in order to become a good medievalist? Would you tell the student to find another vocation, or would you attempt to find a way to adapt language courses so the student could have a fair chance at taking up the foreign language(s) of his or her choice?

*Another example: Helen Keller learned, aside from English, Latin, French, German, and, if I recall correctly, at least a bit of Greek, and she was deaf and blind.

Full Metal Jacket

2008-06-21T23:19:00.006-06:00

I'm watching Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - taking a short break for the moment.

In one scene, the drill sergeant, Hartman, asks if anyone knows who Harvey Lee Oswald was. One of the Marines-in-training replies that he was the person who shot Kennedy 'from the book-suppository'.

So that's why Oswald chose the book 'depository'....

God, I love captioning.

And speaking of captioning, the scene immediately following has no captioning for the opening lines. I assume it's because Hartman is walking towards the camera and one can clearly lip-read him (in my case, anyways) and realise that he's leading the recruits in singing 'Happy Birthday':

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Jesus,
Happy birthday to you!

Immediately after finishing the song, the captioning comes back on when the sergeant tells the recruits that '[t]oday...is Christmas! There will be a magic show at 0930!' Why there should be no captioning during the singing of 'Happy Birthday', I have no idea. (Again, I love captioning. And hate it.)

At any rate, Hartman continues his speech, in which he demonstrates his ... original, let us say, appreciation for God and His saints:

"Chaplain Charlie will tell you about how the free world will conquer Communism with the aid of God and a few marines! God has a hard-on for marines because we kill everything we see! He plays His games, we play ours! To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls! God was here before the Marine Corps! So you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Corps! Do you ladies understand?"

I also found it interesting when Hartman gave Pvt. James "Joker" Davis a hard time (one might even say 'hell') for not believing in the Virgin Mary. I believe Hartman's exact comment was "You goddamn communist heathen, you had best sound off that you love the Virgin Mary, or I'm gonna stomp your guts out! Now you do love the Virgin Mary, don't ya?" Somehow I must admit I didn't really see religion playing a role, however minor or unusual, in a Kubrick film...

On another note, does anyone know if Pvt. Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence has mental issues? Watching him in the movie (played by Vincent D'Onofrio, esp. of Law and Order: Criminal Intent fame), I have to wonder if Pyle is meant to be seen as a character who has mental issues. He appears to have difficulties understanding commands and has issues distinguishing his left from his right. The mannerisms D'Onofrio lends to his character make me wonder if D'Onofrio meant to play Pyle as, at least, a dimwitted and clumsy character of sorts, albeit one who has issues with food and weight as well.

(Edit: If Pyle doesn't have mental issues now, he certainly has them later on in the film.)

At any rate, back to the movie!

"Which House's Bob's?"

2008-06-19T14:34:00.005-06:00

I forgot all about these two, which came out during the Super Bowl this past February. They're both subtitled as well and are in American Sign Language (ASL).

Coming Out: A short film

2008-06-19T14:21:00.005-06:00

A brilliant short film entitled Coming Out.

It's subtitled, as parts of the film are conducted in British Sign Language (BSL).

And before anyone asks, yes, I've felt like that from time to time, I must admit. I'm quite happy where I am, though!

Captioning bloopers

2008-06-19T11:56:00.004-06:00

A new feature, to be put up once a week! I'll try for every Monday from here on out, but no guarantees.

While reading a book about the history of the medieval papacy, I was reminded of a captioning blooper from my first year of my BA: ~~was that really seven years ago?~~ I still remember it as if it had happened yesterday. (Also see this post, if you haven't already.)

It was a survey course of European history from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. (I was into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century deaf history then, particularly in terms of the first school for the deaf, as established by the abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée and continued by his disciple, the abbé Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard.)

The professor was discussing the Catholic Church in the late medieval period, in particular the general ecclesiastical hierarchy. At one point, she mentioned bishops, and the captionist, instead of captioning out bishop, captioned bitch op.

Even to this day, I always smile a little whenever I see or hear the word bishop. Then I wonder if it's a bad thing that the only thing that I distinctly remember from that course is a captioning blooper....

Attack of the cyborgs!

2008-06-18T14:43:00.002-06:00

My apologies for the downtime - I was quite busy with a family wedding this past weekend.

I've been re-reading Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.

An e-version of this article can be found here.

(A warning to those who either dislike Foucault or become faint-hearted at the mere prospect of having to read his writings: Haraway writes very much in a Foucauldian style. That, and her writing has the hallmarks of "thesauritis".*)

The idea of cyborgs is an interesting one in and of itself. In a sense, I am myself one, because of my cochlear implants; I have magnets in my head, along with tiny processors that ensure that everything works. (Perhaps one day I'll give a more technical explanation, but for now, just trust me on this.)

Modern society sees technological advancements as markers of progress: a bionic hand recently won the MacRobert Prize, the UK's top engineering prize. The story emphasises how technology has allowed people who have received the hand to have as normal a life as possible.

That's the whole point of technology, to allow people to have as normal a life as possible.

However, what precisely is normal? The fact that I have an implant or that soldiers who lost their hands or arms in Iraq now have access to a bionic hand marks us as different, as not quite being normal. Yet there is this idea that we are 'normal' in that 'normal' capabilities have been 'restored' to us thanks to the miracles of technology.

Perhaps this is indeed true in the case of people who have lost their hand or arm and can now look forward to a reasonable facsimile in the bionic hand, but what about me? I was born with no natural hearing, so how exactly does the idea of technology as a 'normalising' force work in my case? In individual terms, it's making me out to be abnormal by taking me away from what is 'normal' for me and creating me as a reasonably 'normal' person in terms of society's understanding of what constitutes 'socially normal'. There's no middle ground, no liminality.

The reason I say there is no middle ground is because, at least in my experience, I am either dealing with 'cyborgism' on an individual level or on a social level. I'm either one or the other; it's not possible, at least not for me, to bring the two together.

The strange thing is I don't see myself as moving away from something towards something. I've often been asked if I'd jump at the chance to receive natural hearing. I always answer 'no'. It then becomes a haggling of sorts: a year? a month? a week? a day? an hour? I always answer 'no' in every instance, and most people are dumbfounded. How can I not want to be 'normal'?

The difficulty for most people is understanding that the idea of 'cyborgism' is just that, an idea. I don't necessarily see myself as a cyborg - I see myself as a person who simply happens to have some electronics in his head. For me, this is normal. I'm not saying that everyone else is different or abnormal, merely that in terms of my life experience, what I experience is normal to and for me. In that sense, I don't see myself as attempting to move from an 'inferior' position to a 'better' one in terms of my life experience. To me, having cochlear implants that allow me to hear is perfectly normal. If anything, it's just as normal as not being able to hear anything when I take them off - neither experience is alien when compared to the other or understood on its own terms.

It's times like these that I really wish I could get into the minds of the disabled people I'm working with in my records. Just how did they perceive their disabilities, particularly in terms of permanent ones - namely, from birth - as opposed to those that were acquired, either permanently or temporarily, at a later stage in life?

*Excessive usage of the thesaurus in one's writing when plain, straightforward English would have worked just as well, if not better.

God bless Latin!

2008-06-07T21:51:00.007-06:00

So today, I was reading Books on Fire: The Destruction of Libraries throughout History by Lucien X. Polastron.

In a particular section discussing the destruction of the Medici library in Florence under Savanarola, I came across the following paragraph, which discussed how the Vatican became worried about books that did not espouse official Catholic doctrine and the development of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books):

On May 4, 1515, the Lateran Council decreed that in order to eradicate the "too numerous errors in the past and even more dreadful in the future," [in terms of books] everything of a nature to shake the faith would be burned. Satisfied with this impossible visionary formulation, it designated no authors or titles. These were provided, however, with the bull Exurge Domina of 1520, which put Luther on the index.

Yes, you read that correctly. Exurge Domina. Not Exsurge Domine. And if you know your Latin, you will find Exurga Domina hilariously entertaining*. Now we all know where Luther's (in)famous reference to his bowels came from....

*I highly suspect blogspot would censor this post if I posted precisely what this translates out to - my apologies!

For the record, Exsurge Domine means 'Arise, O Lord'. Exurge Domina, however, means something completely different! And, yes, Domina is the ~~feminine~~ neuter plural form of 'Lord' - thanks for the update, Eaquae Legit!

Sorry - was out playing fetch!

2008-06-03T01:18:00.003-06:00

Chase's blogspot status: Sleeping, and Greg should be doing the same thing too, seeing as he has to finish writing up the first draft of his book review tomorrow, among other things! I like using Greg's neck rest as a pillow, though...I hope he won't mind?....

In the middle!

2008-06-03T00:35:00.006-06:00

I want to PhD in medieval disability studies.

More specifically, I want to look at disabilities from 'in the middle'. This is to say that I don't want to do a top-down or bottom-up history.

People often ask me why I want to work in this field. My favourite line is:

'You're deaf! What could you ever do in medieval disability history?!' (I always laugh whenever I get that line or something like it, I must admit!)

I've had some interesting and memorable (read: memorable) experiences with the disability office on campus here during my BA and MA. My disability advisor has her own idea of what a deaf student should be, what this student's skill set should be, what his/her needs are, and the best way to meet those needs. I have mine, based on my experiences as a deaf person and student.

Suffice it to say that we have often disagreed on exactly what it is I need and why. She has made it clear many times that she is the expert, not me. She knows what it is that I need, and I should just sit back and relax, leave everything to her. I have always disagreed with this philosophy, because it pigeonholes me and encourages me to be passive and lazy and develop a mentality that I can - and should - always depend on others to decide what is best for me and what I need. In other words, she's asking me to confirm her theoretical understanding of what a deaf student should be like - disabled, as in disabled, not dis-abled. (I must say I really wish I had remembered that term before it was brought up at Kalamazoo; I discussed the idea of ~~dis~~ability quite frequently in high school and during the first three years of my BA. Why I forgot all about that term is beyond me.)

This is what I've become so fascinated in, this place where theory and reality meet. What happens in this arena? My advisor has her theory, and I do not fit her theoretical model of a 'proper' deaf student. (Read: I do not employ American Sign Language. I do not rely on notetakers. I do not need ghost writers or ghost editors to help me with my papers. I do not have a reading level of Grade 6 or thereabouts. I do, however, use Signing Exact English. I use real-time captioning/CART in my classes and make my own notes after classes on my own times from the transcripts [i.e. I 'see' what is said instead of hearing it]. I write my papers on my own. And my reading level is well past Grade 12, or at least it was when I was last tested in Grade 9.)

The fact that I do not fit neatly into her cosmology, let us say, has forced both of us to redefine where we stand in relation to the other over the years. In many ways, this experience has caused me to see that it is here, 'in the middle', that society's understanding of the disabled is formed. It's all quite well to formulate the theory, but the theory is useless without actual disabled bodies in the first place upon which to place this theory. Actual disabled bodies cannot be defined without a framework of sorts, and this framework is, to some degree, necessarily theoretical.

Why is it necessarily theoretical? Put it this way: Eaquae Legit can spend all day trying to explain what it means to be hearing, and I can do the same in terms of my deafness. Eaquae Legit can stuff her ears with cotton or get good earplugs, and I have my cochlear implants. (The human ear can detect over 6000 frequencies; I only get 22. Assuming 6000 frequencies, I only get 0.0037% of what the average hearing person gets frequency-wise.) The theory comes from attempting to describe our respective experiences. I have to imagine what it must be like to be hearing, just as Eaquae Legit has to imagine what it must be like to be deaf - neither of us can truly separate our present experiences from our imagined ones. That is why it is necessarily theoretical. There is always a silence there: for Eaquae Legit, 0.0037% must be a terrifying number to contemplate, yet I cannot imagine having more than 0.0037%. Anything less than that would represent a truly colossal decline for me, whereas for Eaquae Legit, it would likely(?) be an infinitely small change, one that would not even be perceivable, let alone imagined or experienced.

What is the role of this silence in the middle? What happens in the middle when theory and reality come together?

And wouldn't it be amusing to have someone who would have been deaf, mute, and dumb in the medieval period examine this question? =)

Into Great silence (Pt. II)

2008-06-03T00:24:00.004-06:00

Finally finished watching Into Great Silence. (Thanks again, Eaquae Legit!)

Near the end of the film, the blind monk makes a second appearance. He speaks for about 90 seconds - it's the closest you get to a soliloquy in this film.

He thanks God for his blindness. He argues that God is always watching out for our souls, so everything that happens to us happens for a reason, namely to bring us closer to Him and to encourage us to strengthen our faith. For this monk, his blindness is a tangible reminder of both his human frailty and the real presence of God in his life.

Did disabled people perceive their disabilities in this same light in the medieval period? Was it seen as something positive, or at least a tangible reminder of the real presence of God in their lives, a sort of perpetual Eucharist of sorts?

On another note, I had a difficult time watching this film because of the prevalence of silence in it. There are only twelve times throughout this film when we hear words being spoken (and the film is 2 hours and 41 minutes long).

I found it a disorienting experience because I thought this would be my kind of film: one where I would be in the same boat as anyone else who watched it. I wouldn't have to deal with captions that might likely summarise what was being said (which happens frequently if long lines are being given) instead of telling me what was being said word-for-word. Yet, it confused me because the more I watched, the more I realised that I was having issues with the silence itself. With my cochlear implants, I'm used to a world of sound, so for me to be disoriented was in and of itself a disorienting experience: why should I be thrown off by this presence of silence? When I turn off my implants, I hear absolutely nothing. You could set off a bomb five feet from me and - this is all hypothetical, of course - I wouldn't hear it at all. (I would, however, react to the vibration and light, but not to the sound.)

This should have been my kind of movie. I should have been absolutely happy with the lack of sound, given my personal situation. Yet, I found myself straining to hear the background sounds and catch the notes of the Latin hymns instead of just enjoying the images themselves.

What am I, then? Am I deaf, or am I hearing, or am I 'hearing'?

Did anyone in the medieval period who was disabled suffer a (brief, temporary) identity crisis, especially those who became disabled at some point in their life?

Disabled communities

2008-05-28T18:03:00.003-06:00

It's been a fun few days over at In The Middle (which has a new address, by the way).

The comments on my two pieces have been enjoyable to read (note to self: remember to respond to the latest comments tonight or tomorrow).

One of the themes the comments have touched on is the idea of exactly where modern theories and understandings of disability intersect with medieval theories and understandings, and what role they can play in expanding the field itself.

I've been having an interesting discussion with Josh Eyler in the comments section on one of my earlier posts, and have also picked it up with some others off-blog. The idea at the middle of the discussion is that of community.

Scholars have traditionally ascribed the disabled the status of a 'community' either by excluding them and moving them to the margins, thereby giving them not necessarily the status of, but at least the sense of, community by setting them firmly within the realm of the 'Other', or by lumping them in with the poor, thereby implying that the disabled can attain no better (community) status than that of the 'poor vagrant'.

The difficulty with these 'definitions' is the suggestion that there is a 'disabled community' in there somewhere. While I am not arguing that disabled people may have banded together because of their similar social status and/or life experiences, I am hesitant to suggest that there may have been a genuine sense that disability itself could act as a cohesive force that brought people who were disabled together into a group (or 'community') of like-minded people, both in terms of life experiences and in how they wished to be treated and perceived in their communities and in medieval society at large.

Jeffrey Cohen, in one of his insightful remarks, brought up the issue of the 'crip identity'. This identity is based on the understanding that people who are defined as being 'crippled' are actively taking a socially negative term and turning it into a positive one. This process goes back to something I have discussed in earlier posts: identity. This, to me, runs the risk of moving counter to the goals of the 'crip community': in encouraging 'normal' society to perceive 'crips' as being productive and full members of society who simply happen to be 'crippled', this reaffirms their identity as 'crips', potentially to the minimising and/or outright exclusion of others such as gender, race, cultural background, religion, and many others.

During the first year of my MA, I took a course on race and gender in modern American history (it fulfilled a departmental requirement that at least one of my courses not be related to my field of study). It turned out to be one of the best courses I took during my coursework, strangely enough. The professor challenged me to realise and attempt to begin to understand what precisely the role of disabling people does to their identity as a whole. Before I took this course, I had always defined myself as someone who was deaf. This definition emphasises the fact that I am a person instead of my deafness, but it still carries the connotation that I can only be defined by my deafness, both by myself and others.

As a scholar, am I guilty of understanding the disabled only as disabled people, instead of people who happen to be disabled? Granted, part of the difficulty is my source material: they define the disabled as the disabled - they're deaf-mutes, blind people, cripples, paralytics, idiots, lunatics, imbeciles, fools, deformed, and the like. Does this absolve me of a scholarly responsibility to at least consider why medieval people understood the disabled as being the disabled, not necessarily as people who happened to be disabled? For all I know, once I start examining this question, I might find that at least in some cases and/or situations, the disabled were perceived as being people first, disabled second?

Ultimately, this comes back to the issue of community, and that of pride as well. Scholars have written about how community was extremely important in the medieval period, perhaps even more so than today, and I have to wonder if this discussion was applicable to the disabled as well. Were they allowed to participate in community activities, and did they do so as the disabled (which may or may not suggest that there was an underlying current of pity and/or Christian charity), or as people who merely happened to be disabled? Were they disabled, or dis-abled? And, of course, what happened if a disabled person spent most of his or her life within the local area? Would people have come to see him or her simply as another fixture in the local scenery, just as Tom Brewer or John Ploughman and their families had been in the area for years and years and were as much a part of the community as anyone else? Was John or Jane Disabled seen as a negative force within the community, someone who could be used as a scapegoat, or as a source of pride in that the community was inclusive and properly Christian?

You may have noticed that I did not take the last part of that question further to ask whether or not John or Jane Disabled may have been proud of their disability in that it set them apart from their community and made them unique. This is a feature of the 'crip community' ideology, and I cannot see how we can find source material that would allow us to examine this question in terms of the medieval period. It could be done indirectly, I am sure, but it would not be very convincing, I don't think. (Feel free to disagree with me on this point, of course.)

I realise that many of my posts have followed this framework - i.e. discussing something about the medieval period, examining my experiences, and coming back to the medieval period. This may seem strange to some, but I think it is actually quite a good method for me, at least, to try to understand modern understandings of disability while reminding me that I need to apply these same questions, concerns, and issues to my (medieval) sources: the only reason we currently think that medieval people did not discuss disability very much is because we have not looked at the sources. What if they did, and how did their understandings affect their ideas, and how can they be used to examine modern understandings, instead of (just) the other way around?

This field is so new that there are certainly many more questions than answers, and I'm not exactly helping on the answer side of the ledger at the moment, I realise that. Even though I cannot provide concrete answers at the moment, this is one of the reasons why I set up this blog: to raise questions and hopefully engage interested readers in a discussion of how these questions may affect studying the disabled in medieval Europe (if at all). I fully realise that medieval people may very well have had different priorities and conceptions of disability than I do today.

I suppose this means I'm using modern theories of disability as a springboard into the medieval period, aren't I? Again, I'm not opposed to the idea in principle (as those of you who have read my ITM post and follow-up comments will know): I merely wish to be careful about how I go about it. This field is so new that I think it's quite important to ask questions like these before and while engaging with our sources: these questions will, hopefully, lead us to try to understand a bit better, at least, just how medieval people dealt with the disabled.

The problem, of course, is convincing myself that it's all right to actually write an article or chapter based on all of these questions; after all, how else will I uncover more exciting - and vexing - questions that I haven't yet considered?

Speaking of that, I should probably respond to the CFP that was sent out today. I think something based on my SEMA paper for this October (sorry! You want to know what it's about, you'll have to attend! =) ) would be quite good for the collection.

Into Great Silence (Pt. I)

2008-05-26T12:31:00.004-06:00

I've been watching the German documentary Into Great Silence, which was highly recommended by Eaquae Legit.

The documentary shows what life is like at the Grand Chartreuse, the head house of the Carthusian order in France, long considered one of Catholicism's most austere orders.

Over a period of just under three hours, one is treated to a series of moving images. The most startling thing about this film is the importance and role of silence; there are only twelve points during the entire film where words are spoken, and briefly.

I have yet to fully formulate my thoughts on this film, but I wish to reflect upon a particular image early on in the film. The camera is positioned so we are looking through a door into a monk's cell; the end of a table and a chair are visible just beyond the doorframe.

A blind monk shuffles quietly from left to right, coming into our view as he passes the doorframe on his journey to the table, where he reaches for the chair, feeling it to figure out his spatial relationship to it before sitting down quietly.

The image shifts abruptly to a close-up of the monk: we can see the creases in his face and wisps of his white hair, along with one of his eyes.

Very little has been said in the film up to this point, save for background noises and Latin chants. I found myself wondering what it must be like to live in a place where silence is willingly self-imposed, even if it would be to one's benefit, as in the case of the blind monk.

Now, I am not presuming to say that the monk in question dislikes his situation: one has to remember the evocative idea of having to lose a sense in order to gain something better - philosophers have long waxed upon the idea that one has greater clarity of vision when one is physically blind (two of the most famous classical examples are Tiresias and Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, as well as Odysseus' respect for Tiresias in the Odyssey).

Is it possible that disabilities were welcomed in the medieval period? Did disabilities, in some contexts, acquire a positive sense, particularly in that they may have encouraged a special communion with God? Furthermore, if this is the case, did those disabilities 'Other-ise' people? In the case of the monk discussed above, the most visible thing about him, aside from the white stick, is his white habit: even though he is blind, he is still considered a full member of the community. He is not necessarily an 'Other' except in that his blindness simply indicates that he cannot see.

Also, the inclusion of those two images in the film are a reflection upon the choices of the filmmaker. This monk is shown by himself, getting from place to place under his own power without any assistance. Is this meant to be an implicit commentary on both the equality implicit within the community and the asceticism of the monastery? Is this monk seen as equal in that he is still capable of carrying out various tasks on his own while potentially needing help with some others (which would, to borrow the phrase from an excellent paper on disability at Kalamazoo, make him dis-abled, not disabled)? At the same time, is this meant to reflect upon the asceticism of the order, in that the experience of living at the monastery is ultimately a test of self-discipline, a challenge to rise above the petty issues that our bodies may throw at us in order to work towards a greater good?

Problems re: leaving comments

2008-05-26T12:03:00.002-06:00

I've been informed by a reader of this blog that there are some difficulties regarding leaving comments on posts.

I've made a couple of changes which I hope will allow anyone to leave comments if they so wish. If the problem persists, please let me know at [greg . carrier @ gmail . com] and I'll see what I can do.

Thank you.

Medieval disability studies up at In The Middle!

2008-05-26T08:16:00.004-06:00

My post on medival disability studies is up at In The Middle.

It is the first of a series of three posts. This post discusses medieval disability studies in general and its current status within medieval studies. The second post will briefly discuss Margery Kempe, while the third will discuss legal examples of the disabled, at the request of Karl Steel, one of the co-authors of ITM.

Karl has also written a thoughtful essay on disability studies at ITM in advance of my post. You may read it here.

Please feel free to leave comments at ITM, or if you would rather discuss them privately, you may contact me at [greg . carrier @ gmail . com]. If you would like to compose a post in reply to my comments at ITM and have it posted here or on the Society's blog, that can be done as well.

In The Middle (of medieval disability studies, that is)

2008-05-25T12:10:00.003-06:00

Just a heads-up that I will be guest-blogging on J.J. Cohen's excellent site, In The Middle, later this week. I will be discussing medieval disability studies and my particular interests in this field.

The Society will also be mentioned, so please do stop by both ITM and the Society's blog (see the next post below) in the next few days!

Chase's blogspot status: Chase is sad that Greg's spending so much time working on his ITM post and the Society blog. She's currently trying to convince Greg to stop said work for a while by lying on her bed, using stuffed baby Chase as a pillow, and giving Greg the sad puppy-dog eyes of DOOM. Doesn't seem to be working today, though. Wait, it is! Woohoo! Off to play fetch now!

The Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages

2008-05-25T12:00:00.006-06:00

A group of scholars who are interested in medieval disability studies gathered together one evening at the recent Kalamazoo conference to establish a new academic society dedicated to this new field.

The Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages (SSDMA) was thus formed under the capable leadership of Joshua Eyler.

If you would like further information on the Society, or would like to inquire as to membership, please feel free to amble over to the Society's brand-new blog, where yours truly is one of the "gubernatores".

Hope to see a few of you there!

New feature! (part II)

2008-05-23T20:15:00.005-06:00

Below 'Bonkface VIII' in the left column, I've added 'Recent Comments', which will keep track of the five most recent comments on my posts.

Ah, progress!

Chase's blogspot status: Chase is happily off for a walk before coming home to a spot of 'fetch' before retiring for the night, therefore she's too busy to change her status; she's requested that Greg put this up for her, seeing as he's too busy working on his post for ITM to take her out for a walk. Maybe he'll be done by the time she gets back to play fetch with her?...

New feature!

2008-05-23T14:16:00.004-06:00

During a conversation with Eaquae Legit yesterday afternoon, she commented that Chase has a personality of her own, which may appear unusual, given that most people tend to assume that service dogs are perfect, well-trained dogs who ... well, work.

From here on out, I'll see if I can't remember to put a Facebook-esque comment regarding Chase's current status at the end of my posts.

Therefore, without further ado, I give you:

Chase's blogspot status: Chase hopes Greg wont wake her up from her, erm, 'work', because she's very happy ~~napping~~ working on the floor of the medical sciences library, especially with the warm sunlight shining onto the floor from the skylights.

Drinking with Tom. No, not THAT Tom. THIS Tom.

2008-05-22T22:25:00.007-06:00

Remember when I mentioned drunken Aquinas?

My comment on the scholarly value of a drunken Aquinas came about as a result of the roundtable discussion on medieval disability in a Kalamazoo session.

My MA thesis looks at mental illness in Plantagenet England, and a particular comment that Aquinas makes in his Summa has some relevance to how the mentally ill were perceived in his time. According to Penelope Doob, Aquinas “draws an analogy to the state of drunkenness which is willingly entered into, so that a drunken man is responsible for the sins he commits when drunk even though he did not directly and voluntarily approve those particular acts”¹ in order to argue that the insane should be held responsible for their actions when their insanity was caused by sin.

One of the leading historians of the insanity defence, Daniel Robinson, blames the Church for its negative impact on how modern scholars – and modern people in general – perceive the insanity defence and its application in the medieval period. He writes that medieval Christianity’s obsession with sin saw a “voluntarist theory of criminal liability” adopted by the courts, which assumed “mental disturbance … to be of the sinner’s own making.”As a result, a jury, according to Robinson, could not possibly declare a person “not guilty by reason of insanity” because the “not guilty” are still guilty.² His argument relies upon the fact that it does jive with some ecclesiastical sources, such as Aquinas’ Summa. (For the pertinent passage, scroll down to the paragraph beginning with "Accordingly therefore we must make a distinction:...".)

Now, scholars are breaking out of the ‘disability as sin’ model, but this is not to say that medieval thinkers never equated disability with sin; some certainly did.³ My interest with this particular analogy from Aquinas is perhaps unanswerable, but I think it’s an important question worth asking.

How exactly did Aquinas come to the conclusion that the state of drunkenness was akin to being insane? Put bluntly, did he wake up one morning, decide that he was going to get absolutely smashed, see what happened, and stop by the nearest church for confession afterwards if necessary to confess his sins?

This is one of the reasons why I’m so fascinated by this field, medieval disability history. We don’t necessarily have numerically comparable sources if we were to compare this field with that of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American disability history, nor can we (fairly) easily discern what the disabled actually thought about their experiences and the times they lived in, because not many disabled people produced sources directly.⁴

Our sources are inherently of the top-down variety as a result: anyone who’s worked with medieval English legal records – as I do – can tell you they never ever end, which is both a blessing (so much source material!) and a curse (they never end, which means you’re never done, either). There aren’t many bottom-up records in the sense of truly being ‘bottom-up’: even parish records, for instance, are still produced by someone who’s literate and who works within a particular theoretical and ideological framework. We do get glimpses of what life must have been like for the disabled and those who cared for them and interacted with them on a regular, day-to-day basis, but it’s still not the same as reading the moving essay by Ferdinand Berthier, a deaf Frenchman, in honour of the abbé Sicard at the National Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris in the early nineteenth century.⁵ Such a source is virtually impossible for the medieval period: I certainly wouldn’t be able to “read ’n ’rite” if I had been born in 1350. (Might have been carried off by la moria grande, but that’s another post.⁶)

To come back to Aquinas (hope you weren’t hitting the screech, Tom – that’s for Eaquae Legit and me), medieval disability scholars don’t have the luxury of an (over)abundance of sources that allow us to see how knowledge about various disabilities was acquired by those who weren’t disabled. As far as I can tell, we have to take Aquinas’ comparison of drunkenness with insanity on its own merits without really being able to understand just how Aquinas arrived at his conclusion that the two could be equated.

It would be a fair point to say that any reasonable person who’s tied on one too many (okay, maybe a few) could reasonably make this link between drunkenness and insanity. Yes, you could, now that I’ve told you that Aquinas did it.

How many of us have actually equated the two without being told that Aquinas did? That is the crux of the issue for me: how is it possible to equate two seemingly similar ‘experiences’?⁷ What exactly brought Aquinas to such a conclusion? Did he meet someone who was mentally ill who, to Aquinas, appeared to act as if he or she was drunk? Did he determine that someone who’s completely drunk is out of his or her wits, just as a mentally ill person is, ergo being drunk must be the closest ‘normal’, sane people can get in terms of experiencing the state of being insane?

Come on. You all know that it’d be funny if we suddenly discovered in some previously undiscovered or unread manuscript that medieval physicians and jurists were required to get sloshed at some point during their training in order to simulate the sense of being insane. A lot more fun than stuffing one’s ears with cotton to simulate being hard of hearing or deaf. Yes, you know it!

"Class, today we'll be simulating what it probably feels like to be insane. Please be sure to fill up your mugs or steins most liberally with some oak-aged Domesday ale or metheglin, kindly provied by the Medieval Brewers Guild of Kalamazoo fame. When we're all sufficiently sober, probably some time next week, we'll meet and compare notes."

Come to think of it, that could be a good paper proposal for the Pseudo-Society at Kalamazoo one year…. I can just see the paper title:

Reading the Beer-soaked Summa Theologica: Proof that Aquinas Wrote it While Drunk

Or something like that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should go have a shot or two of screech before Tom gets to the point of offering it to the angels in an attempt to prove to me that (a) angels exist and (b) that he really is the Angelic Doctor, even though he already knows I’m a practising Catholic.

Although it’d be pretty cool to see an angel up close, I have to admit.

Endnotes

¹Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I-II, Q77, A7. Cited in Penelope B.R. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 34-35.

²Daniel N. Robinson, Wild Beasts and Idle Humours: The Insanity Defense from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 57.

³Another example of the ‘disability as sin’ model, well-known to scholars who work with the mentally ill, is The Mirror of Justices, attributed to Andrew Horne. The Mirror notes that only those who were born “fools” were exempt from the taint of sin. The Mirror of Justices, ed. W.J. Whitaker (London: B. Quaritch, 1893), I.16.139. F.W. Maitland writes that this is not a trustworthy source of English law, however: as an “interesting but dangerous” source, it was “written by one profoundly dissatisfied with the administration of the law by the king’s judges.” The Mirror draws on sources beyond legal practice, namely mythology, the Bible, and theology and fails to make any practical distinction between royal and ecclesiastical law, as other legal collections (as Bracton, Britton, and Fleta do). The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland, ed. H.A.L. Fisher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), II.

⁴This is why I don’t include Margery Kempe and her (auto)biography as a truly genuine source: she did not produce it herself, and her (auto)biography was constructed within a particular framework, namely that of (female) mystic literature. I’ll discuss my position in a later post, coming next week.

⁵ The Deaf Experience: Classics in Language and Education, ed. Harlan Lane, trans. Franklin Philip (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). I don’t have the book with me, but one chapter is dedicated to Berthier and reprints his entire essay in translation.

⁶ The only reason I know the Italian for ‘the great plague’ is because I recently read Ken Follett’s excellent novels detailing medieval life in a fictional medieval town, Kingsbridge, that's attempting to build a cathedral and transform itself into a proper cathedral town during the Anarchy (The Pillars of the Earth) and its attempt to repair the cathedral and survive the Hundred Years War and the Black Death (World Without End). I’m still working on taking up French. Italian might be down the road somewhere. Really down the road, that is.

⁷ One cannot be drunk forever, hence the act of being drunk is a very brief experience in and of itself, whereas being insane, either temporarily or permanently, is, to me, more of a state than an experience. Please feel free to disagree – leave a post here, or if you would rather discuss this with me privately, you may contact me at [greg . carrier @ gmail . com]. (Please remember to omit the spaces in between the periods and ‘at’ sign.)

The REAL Bayeux Tapestry

2008-05-22T18:36:00.001-06:00

Need I say more beyond the title?

Enjoy!

Further ruminations on medieval service dogs

2008-05-22T14:45:00.005-06:00

Apparently Chase does not like working outside in the rain. She's been, well, pissy all day with me. Sorry, dear, but I can't control the weather.

Chase's, ... unprofessional demeanour today got me thinking about another facet of having her in my life.

I chose to get her. She was not forced on me. In effect, I chose to 'visualise' my deafness.

What exactly happened in the medieval period when a situation like mine today occurred? Of course, it'd be impractical to use my actual situation in, say, 1350, as I'd be deaf, mute, and dumb (in terms of medieval terminology).

Were there personal reasons for visualising an otherwise invisible disability in the medieval period? Would someone wanted to have visualised his or her disability for safety reasons? For instance, if someone was hard of hearing, would he or she want that fact to be known within the community so that if an emergency happened, he or she could feel (relatively?) secure in the knowledge that others knew what to do?

To continue the issue of safety - not to say that there aren't other issues that could be considered in light of this discussion - where does the issue of choice come in? That is to say, were disabled people in the medieval period granted the choice of deciding whether or not to disclose or visualise their disability? Did family and friends take that choice into their own hands if they felt that disclosure would benefit the disabled person in terms of ensuring his or her safety?

Perhaps most important, did disclosure act as the disabling force itself? Did the act of disclosure make it irrevocably final? This is it - I am now disabled. / This is it. Our family member/relative/friend is disabled.

If a disability was not explicitly visible, did that mean that disclosing it removed it from some intellectual and/or theoretical plane and transformed it into an actual disability, both in terms of how the disabled person perceived his or her disability and also in how others perceived him or her, particularly in terms of an identity? Objects that evoke ideas of disability have a power and ability to be transformed into the disability itself in modern society. When we think of the blind, we think of white sticks and guide dogs; the deaf evoke images of hearing dogs, cochlear implants, hearing aids, sign language, interpreters, and the like; physically disabled people appear physically infirm in that they're wheelchair-bound or have crutches or walkers or other supports that say, "I'm physically disabled!"

Is there a distinction to be made between needing and choosing to have (or use) visual objects/signifiers? Does needing a particular object merely confirm that one indeed has a disability? Does choosing to employ such an object confirm to the disabled person that he or she is disabled, perhaps even more so than someone who actually needs the object in question? Is it possible to separate objects from disabilities, or are objects so much a part of the disability (or disabilities) they are associated with that it is impossible to separate them from the larger question of disability and identity?

Case in point: When I attended Kalamazoo earlier this month, I did not bring Chase with me. (My first trip with Chase involving a plane will not be a transborder and/or international flight.)

I did not have Chase when I attended Kalamazoo in 2007, but when I went this year, I caught myself having dissociative moments, if you will: a few times, I realised that I was talking to an invisible Chase while attempting to reach for an invisible harness on her invisible back. I had to remind myself that, no, she was not with me in Kalamazoo; she was back home in Canada probably pestering my parents to play fetch with her or feed or otherwise give her some attention. (Apparently she spent most of her time checking, double-checking, and triple-checking that, no, I was not hiding in my room from her.)

Even though I did not have Chase with me, I was still deaf. The only difference was that my deafness was once again invisible until someone engaged me in conversation (or I ran into someone I knew from previous conferences who knew that I was deaf, of course). I wonder what would happen if I brought Chase to Kalamazoo next year: would people I know see her as merely another tool to help me (not that you're an actual physical tool, dear. Here's a treat - now shut up.) navigate the world as a deaf person and scholar, or would they assume that I had developed some other disability or condition since this year's Kalamazoo that necessitated Chase's appearance?

With or without Chase, I identify myself as a deaf graduate student and aspiring scholar. The more interesting question for me is that of my external identity - how do others perceive me? Am I perceived as being more 'normal' if I don't have Chase with me? Would I be seen as being disabled (or even more disabled) if Chase is with me? Does Chase appear to make me more of a person in that I'm secure enough in my deafness and my personal identity in that I am willing to advertise it to the world, or does it make me into some 'other' in that I've been 'required' to adopt Chase as a signifier of my otherwise invisible disability?

To come back to the medieval period, as any medievalist well knows, this period was loaded with symbolism and iconography. (Every period is, but the medieval period is quite remarkable for its reliance upon imagery in various mediums.) Medieval society certainly wrestled with the issue of visually representing invisible disabilities, or at least finding metaphors to describe them.* To me, this implies that medieval society was perfectly capable of understanding that disabilities could be both visible and invisible.

As such, what role did this overall idea of invisibility, visibility, and signification play in terms of defining both the idea of disability and specific disabilities themselves in medieval Europe?

The past is truly a foreign country in some respects. I just hope there are signposts where I'm going, and if not, that I remember to put some up so others can follow (and correct them if needed).

*David A. Sprunger, "Depicting the Insane: A Thirteenth-Century Case Study," in Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations, eds. Timothy S. Jones and David A. Sprunger (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), p. 223-241.

Ruminations on medieval service dogs

2008-05-21T14:13:00.004-06:00

Having Chase as a service dog has changed my life in little ways I never realised it would.

The most obvious change is that I've had to learn to slow down. Chase can't walk as quickly as I can (especially if I'm running), so anything beyond a brief moderately quick jog is out of the question.* I used to run like mad to catch the train down to campus if I saw it nearing the station: now, I have to remember to take my time, walk to the platform and if I miss the train that's coming in, well, that's all right: there's another train coming in 5-10 minutes anyways.

The second change I've had to make is in terms of remembering to verbalise my actions for Chase. I have to tell her if I want to turn left, right, go forward, turn around, go to the curb, cross the street, and a few others. (Also helps if I know 'ordinary' commands like sit, stay, heel, down, and the like.) I can no longer just do things on a lark in that I need to remember, "Okay, I need to figure out what I want to do, then tell Chase so we don't get mixed up." That's not to say that I can't be spontaneous: I merely need to be ... thoughtfully spontaneous.

The biggest change, one that I knew I would have to deal with, is the 'visualising' of my deafness. Deafness is inherently an invisible disability in that I could walk down the street without Chase and you wouldn't know I was deaf just from looking at me, unless you took the time to note that I'm wearing cochlear implants.

At the moment, Eaquae Legit and I are trying to compose an abstract to submit to the Journal of Fifteenth Century Studies, which is preparing an issue on late-medieval texts on physical impairment. The fellows who made up the CFP included an image from Hieronymus Bosch's Procession of the Cripples. Two of the people in the woodcut that's been reproduced in the CFP are shown holding on to each other. The 'leader' is holding on to a leash that is tied to a dog, who appears to be more interested in two infirm people than in actually leading his charges.

Now, I'm not suggesting that the dog is a service dog in any capacity. What I'm suggesting is the possibility that the dog may serve to actualise his charges' disabilities. If they're blind (they're not blindfolded, nor do they have any outwardly visible indicator that they're blind) or have some other 'invisible' disability that becomes 'visible' with the presence of the dog, what does that mean for them?

Is the presence of the dog a positive thing? Does the dog serve to inform others that his charges are disabled, and that they need help, or are worthy of Christian charity? Or is the dog meant as an indicator that others should stay away from his charges precisely because they are disabled? Are those people disabled only because their disability is 'physical' in the sense that it's physically visible? (Note that all the other disabled people in the procession are physically disabled - their infirmities are visible, either in the bodies or the assistive devices they have with them.)

This raises an important question: What exactly was a 'physical' disability? Was it a literal definition, or was it based upon the ability to see a disabled person, whether or not his or her disability was actually physical or invisible (and therefore 'visible' through some tangible indicator such as a 'service dog' or crutches or a guide, for instance).

In my case, how exactly would I have been defined as being deaf? Would it have been the fact that I'm unable to hear, which is an 'invisible' disability, until one realised that I was not responding to sounds? Would it be my inability to speak, which would only be discerned when one tried to engage me in conversation? Would it be both together? Or would my physical actions mark me as deaf in that I would not know the proper social graces, so to speak?

Yet another one of those 'big' questions that's going to take a lifetime to sort out.

*Especially seeing as she helps me with my balance: if we're running, she can't provide a stable foundation for me if I should suddenly lose my balance and need her to steady me.

Disability blogosphere!

2008-05-21T11:02:00.003-06:00

Now I'm really happy I was convinced to start this blog.

Ever since I started it up, I've been getting posts from quite a few scholars, both in terms of medieval disability studies and modern disability studies.

Turns out there are quite a few blogs dealing with (modern) disability studies out there in the blogosphere.

The blog at Temple U. is a pretty good portal; definitely a very good place to start. The best thing? One of the contributors is also the moderator for the H-Dis listserv (type in H-Disability in the search field and it'll come up; if you're interested, join the listserv!) and a member of the Disability History Association.

Just goes to show you you never know who you'll meet in this (virtual) world, does it?

Girded lions and flying purple elephants

2008-05-20T20:32:00.005-06:00

While in Kalamazoo, I attended the following sessions:

(Ab)normal Societies: Disability as a Socio-cultural Concept in Medieval Society (which was a tad important, seeing as I presented my paper at this session...)
The Scientific Grounding of Medieval Medicine (excellent papers, especially the one on university-trained physicians and empirical medical knowledge)
Embodied Identities: Disability and Gender in Medieval Literature (I know I said I'm not into disability as a literary study or construct, but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant. Plus the paper on disabling gazes in late medieval [French] lyric was extremely provocative and thoughtful.)
Disability in the Middle Ages: A Roundtable Discussion (by far the best session disability-wise at this year's Kzoo!)

Granted, this list isn't too long. I did have three other sessions on tap, but I got sidetracked (read: ran into friends, both old and new and ended up talking medieval stuff, more or less). Those conversations are the best part of the conference, if you ask me. Papers are important, but it's also the networking and discussing medieval stuff for the pure pleasure of it that's also quite important, particularly the latter point, as I always feel extremely refreshed when I return home from Kalamazoo every year.

There are other people like me who like the medieval period for its own sake! I'm not crazy!

Okay. And I needed a little (coughcough) bit of time for the book exhibits. It wasn't entirely pointless, as I did pick up some books, along with two books to review (Silence and Sign Language being one of them). Happy now?

Speaking of not being crazy, I have a small project on the go at the moment. It should be ready for some time next week: I shall be sure to inform you all when it's up. It has something to do with medieval disability studies, don't worry! I just hope that it'll at least help validate what I'm currently doing and what I plan to do in terms of my PhD. If I'm really lucky, it'll also result in a pretty decent PhD thesis proposal/program of study that I can use in my application to York, as well as in my scholarship applications (gotta love those pesky two-page Program of Study summaries!).

Right. I should probably get back to Silence and Sign Language, seeing as I want to finish reading it by Friday afternoon so I can start writing the review next week. That's assuming that I survive my future brother-in-law's stag party, which has apparently been scheduled to commence at 2 pm Saturday afternoon, ending some time after 2 am Sunday morning, minimum.

If I leave a post discussing flying purple elephants or something of the like Sunday morning-ish, you now know why. You've been warned.

PS. Never schedule flights through O'Hare that give you only a 1 hour and ten minute layover in between flights. Murphy's Law states that flights will be at least 30 minutes late, which means you'll only have 30 minutes to run from gate F22 to gate C4 by the time your flight from Kalamazoo finally makes it from the runway to F22, running like mad through O'Hare, making it to the gate as the plane's being pushed back from the gate, and being thankful that the pilots feel generous enough to come back all of ten feet to pick you up, otherwise you'd have to wait 10-1/2 hours for the next flight back home and pray that you can get in on standby. Not a good idea. Oh, and did I mention that you won't have time to pick up food in Chicago to take on board the plane, seeing as the flight back home takes five hours and all United serves on transborder flights are some peanuts, cookies, and beverages? Again, not a good idea. Especially if you missed breakfast, seeing as you had to leave WMU at 4 am. Definitely not a good idea.

Gird thy lions!*

2008-05-20T12:12:00.004-06:00

Right. The title has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this post, but I thought it was funny, particularly as it came from a discussion of going into battle. (You should be able to figure out what the actual phrase was supposed to be now.)

So, a proper post-Kalamazoo writeup.

Some advice. Never fly to the US on the same day that Air Canada's chartered a plane to take about 50 sick children and their caretakers to Disneyland for the day. Got to the airport at 4.45 am, didn't get through security until 6.05 am. Good thing I got to the airport that early, cos my flight to Chicago left at 6.40 am.

I love and hate O'Hare. Love it cos it actually has decent food options, unlike 98% of airports. Hate it cos United always lands at gate B-something and I inevitably have to hike over to gate D-, E- or F-something, two terminals over. Stupid United for not putting 'international'** flights from Canada with its domestic US flights gate- and terminal-wise.

The flight to Kalamazoo is always a short little hop. The flight was delayed this year, so instead of a 60-minute flight it was about 20 minutes. I don't think we even got to cruising altitude at all, which is fine by me.

I always find Kalamazoo amusing because it's basically in the middle of nowhere, right smack in between Chicago and Detroit. Put it this way: Kalamazoo airport only has five gates. Yep, that kind of town.

I always stay at the dorms at WMU - it's much easier, seeing as 95% of the conference takes place at WMU and not offsite. (That reminds me - must remember to actually get tickets for the concert next year before they run out. And, yes, I do listen to music, preferably classical music or medieval Latin hymns. God bless cochlear implants!)

I forgot to take pictures this year (stupid me), so descriptions will have to suffice. Let's just say that the dorm rooms aren't exactly five-star accommodations; to call them Spartan would be to truly traduce the Greeks. But no one really cares, cos we only use our rooms for sleeping, and barely sleeping, at that. A normal day at Congress runs from 7 am to, oh...1, 2, 3, 4, 5 am, depending on what's going on that particular evening, pretty much.

This was my third time at 'the Zoo' and my second paper. I presented a paper on defining the mentally ill in Plantagenet England in the first round of sessions. (Thank God for that, because I'm paranoid about revising conference papers until 5 minutes before it's time to give them. If I had been required to present on Sunday morning, say, this would not have been as enjoyable a conference thanks to my irrational paranoia.) My paper was quite well-received, and I had some good questions. Two questions in particular I remember:

Did the Crown increase its seeking-out of the mentally ill in order to acquire their lands to turn into cash before and during wars? (Answer: Not necessarily - it did happen, yes, but it wasn't necessarily an active seeking-out of the mentally ill. As the wonderful Wendy pointed out later on, there was also a rise at the beginning of each reign, which I suspect was linked more to the desire to maintain the Crown's privileges vis-a-vis the mentally ill from reign to reign.)
Can we correlate terms like furiosi, imbecillens, and the like to modern medical distinctions for mental illness like autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and the like? (NO. My answer was more ... formal than this, but that's all you need to know, really.)

The best part of all of this? The presider mentioned that I wanted to do my PhD at York, and after the session ended, I was introduced to the amazing Alison, who not only works in medieval disability studies (woot!) but is also PhDing at York (WOOT!).

Ahem.

THANK GOD! I FINALLY HAVE A COLLEAGUE!

Sorry about that. If you ever find yourself working in a relatively new field where most people who work in it are already established scholars who have kind of 'fallen' into the field because of some academic or personal interest, you'll understand. And if you ever find a graduate student who works in your field not because they merely 'fell' into it, but because they LIKE it, you'll really understand. =)

Kzoo was also awesome cos there were a bunch of sessions on medieval disability, and a group of medieval disability scholars, including myself, got together one evening and started up the Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages. ~~I'll leave it to Ali to post the various sessions if she likes.~~ (See above post for descriptions of the sessions.) I was just happy to see more people interested in medieval disability studies, even if they didn't quite understand the relevance of the subject.

At the wonderful roundtable on medieval disability, quite a few audience members had some difficulty understanding why the field was relevant. Many people kept trying to tie it back to literary studies (hellooooooo again, Margery...) instead of treating it as a subject on its own, completely independent of literary studies. This is why we need to toss disability theory out of the window and deal with what people actually wrote and thought about disability in the medieval period, instead of blithely applying modern theories to the medieval period.

Of course, the congress wasn't just about going to papers, although that was quite useful, though. =)

The best part of Kzoo, as always, is the socialising come 5 pm. Head on over to one of several receptions, grab a can of Heineken or get some liquor - pick your poison! - and start talking. The second night, Ali and I ran into each other at the York reception and ended up talking from about 9 pm to 4 am about anything and everything to do with medieval disability studies. Good times. I was dead a few hours later, but it was still good times!

Plus the ale and mead tasting was excellent in waking us all up. I'm pretty sure there are some photos of the Leaning Tower of Pisa/Mead/Ale floating around here somewhere, thanks to Ali, Brent, and Melissa.

Kalamazoo was quite a good time this year: got a few books on subjects that relate to medieval disability studies, such as on the senses in medieval Europe, a collection of miracula stories from the shrine of St Foy, and a few others. I'm good.

I should probably wrap up this post so I can get back to my conversation with Eaquae. Blame her for the abbreviated post. =P I'll pick it up again tomorrow, probably!

*Many thanks to Eaquae's jetlagged and sleep-deprived brain for this one! =)

**Canada has pre-border clearance status, which means you can clear US Customs in Canada before going through security. Technically, this means that the flight is not an international one per se: it's considered a domestic flight for all intents and purposes. This, however, does not seem to apply to gate choices at O'Hare, sadly.

I'm famous! (Don't burst my bubble, please. Let me have my five minutes. Thank you.)

2008-05-18T19:58:00.006-06:00

I've only had my blog up for a few days, and it seems that the excellent Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has heard of both my blog and Eaquae Legit's as well. Woot!

PS. If you haven't read Cohen's The Postcolonial Middle Ages or his Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles, RUN. Don't walk.

That reminds me. I need to remember to pick up my own copies of both works at SEMA's* conference in October, assuming copies will be available, which I hope they will be, seeing as J.J. Cohen is a keynote speaker this year. (It seems the university library's starting to get annoyed with the fact that I've been, um, 'borrowing' those two particular books for quite a long time.)

Things to do for SEMA (in this particular order...hopefully!)

Hope that my paper proposal on defining disability gets accepted.
Book my tickets and hotel.
Go hear J. J. Cohen's keynote speech. (And give my paper somewhere around this time.)
Get copies of his books.

Now I must go explain to Chase just why she should be a fan of J. J. Cohen as well. Assuming I can get her to look up from her bone long enough to give said explanation, of course. Failing that, I'll just get back to Scott G. Bruce's Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition c. 900-1200.

Hey, I'm deaf. I like sign language, especially if it dates from the medieval period!

*The South[E]astern Medieval Association.

Anyone got a dictionary?

2008-05-16T15:34:00.005-06:00

Dear God. If he's 'dumb', what does that make everyone else who doesn't know what Algol and 8 Cephei are, much less understand and/or appreciate how Goodricke's work laid 'the foundation of [the] modern measurement of the Universe'?

And he got into the Royal Society at 21, too! I'd say that qualifies him as pretty smart.

And this, folks, is why I love medieval disability studies so much. I could base my entire academic career just on attempting to discern the various definitions of disability and their precise meanings.

God, I love my job.

Photo taken near the Treasurer's House to the north of York Minster (York, England)

Medieval sign language!

2008-05-16T15:29:00.004-06:00

Case in point: the prophet Daniel is clearly employing the sign for 'lazy' here.

Now, is he telling you that you're lazy, or that he's lazy?....

Photo taken in the undercroft of York Minster (York, England)

A primer to the reactions one gets when they mention 'medieval disability studies'

2008-05-15T22:25:00.009-06:00

New to medival disability studies? Welcome!

The most important thing newbies to this area must know the various responses that they will get when they mention that they work in medieval disability studies. This list is by no means authoritative, but it does convey the importance of making a good show and representing medieval disability. Plus since there are so few of us, we all know each other, which means you're pretty much guaranteed a paper slot at Kzoo if you want it. Woot!

'Oh, medieval disability studies! That's disability studies applied to the medieval period, isn't it?'
'Oh, so you look at disability in literature!' [That's not to say that some people aren't, mind, but not everyone is.]
'Oh, yes! You look at disability and sin, don't you?'
'But there aren't any sources dealing with the disabled in the medieval period, so how can you work on nothing?'
'Ah, so you're a biblical scholar!'
'Have you read Irina Metzler's Disability in Medieval Europe?'
'Have you heard of Irina Metzler? I know that/I heard that she's wrapped up that entire field, so you're a bit too late. Could I interest you in working in [person's area of expertise], though?'
'Have you looked at Margery Kempe?'
'How the hell can you write a PhD on that tiny/useless/[insert adjective of choice here] subject?'
'Disability studies? What's that?'
'There's such a thing?'

'Oh, someone already did that 50 years ago.' [Thanks to Eaquae Legit for this one!]

Christmas 2.0

2008-05-15T22:01:00.005-06:00

So what prompted this blog in the first place? (No, not you, Chase. Go back to sleep. Either that, or work on getting me when someone rings the doorbell instead of just running downstairs and sitting in the living room, waiting for me to come down and open the door. This doesn't exactly work cos I don't know that someone's ringing the doorbell in the first place - put two and two together, won't you, dear?)

As you may have deduced, I am a medievalist. That is to say that I like dead people who have been dead for at least six centuries, preferably no more than nine. (They're just like a fine wine - you have to let them age, but not too much!)

One of the best things my sup has done up to this point in my academic career is introduce me to the wonder that is Kalamazoo. What is Kalamazoo, you may ask? Imagine if the editor had told Virginia that not only is Santa Claus real, but that he comes twice a year. THAT is Kalamazoo to us medivalists. Four glorious days of all things medieval, including mead and ale made from authentic medieval recipes! Yes, ladies and germs, if you can imagine it, chances are it's to be found somewhere at 'the Zoo', provided that it's related to the medieval period.

The best thing, aside from all the free booze* is the ability to say things that people actually understand, such as initiating a discussion on the scholarly value of a drunken Aquinas**. There is also the opportunity to meet equally awesome people, merely cos they actually understand what you say and work in the same period as you do.

I should, however, note that medieval disability studies is a very new field. This is both wonderful and maddening. Wonderful because you can do whatever the heck you want cos no one can tell you you're wrong cos there's no 'proper' or 'correct' historiography to begin with. This, however, is also what makes the field maddening. That, and the fact that it's damn near impossible to find anyone who doesn't think you're working on 'representations of disability in medieval literature'*** or 'the intersection of disability and sin in medieval religion'****, less find anyone who actually understands what you're talking about.

This is why people like Eaquae Legit are absolutely full of WIN.

I absolutely cannot wait for Kzoo 2009! Plus, when Kzoo 2009 rolls around, I'll be a few months away from working with Eaquae Legit on medieval disability at the same school in the same country in the same time zone!!!!!!

I think it's safe to say Christmas has already come twice this year for this medievalist and his dog.

*Absolutely essential in that it facilitates academic networking. If you don't have a can of Heineken or cup of gin and tonic in your hand, no one will speak to you between the hours of 5 pm and 2 am every night. It's a fact.

**To be discussed in a future post...maybe. Props if you understand the reference, which you kinda should if you work in the area of medieval insanity (hint, hint).

***Damned Margery Kempe and her 'madness'!

****Damned Foucault and his 'masterful analysis' (coughcoughcough) of madness in medieval Europe in his History of Madness.

The secret of life? Playing fetch.

2008-05-15T21:42:00.009-06:00

So you may be wondering the following two things:

Just who is Chase?
What prompted this blog in the first place?

These are excellent questions, and I shall respond to them in separate posts. Act I, which takes place tonight, shall respond to the latter, whereas Act II will answer the former.

Chase is my service dog. This is to say that there is a big, fuzzy ball of 2.5-year-old golden fur currently splayed out on the doggie bed next to my bed. (Apparently 9.44 pm is a good bedtime as any.) She's a cross between a golden retriever and a lab.

Her job, in theory, comprises the following duties:

act as a hearing dog (alert me to sounds, my name being called, etc.),
assist with balance (my balance ain't the greatest, let's leave it at that),
work as a guide dog at night (my night vision is somewhere, and that 'somewhere' is not in my eyes where it should be, it seems), and
pick up items that I drop and don't realise that I have dropped (read: she's a real live party trick, especially when it comes to picking up a Canadian dime and giving it to me).

In reality, this is her job description:

demand that we always walk/stand/sit on the left side no matter where we are (you're gonna love England so much when we make it over there, dear - the Brits drive on the left side of the road, after all!),
attempt to avoid having the work harness placed on her before we head out to 'work',
lie down on the bus when I explicitly tell her that she has to remain in the 'up-sit' position,
be a kid magnet* ('Can I pleasepleaseplease pet your dog, mister?'),
ask me for treats for doing a good job every 5 minutes, and, last but not least,
promptly drop off to sleep when I put her under my desk in my campus office when I'm working on my thesis.

I still think she's the best thing that's ever happened to me, though. =) Especially when we get home: she lets me do a bit more work before she comes up to me, puts her head in my lap, gives me her patented sad puppy-dog eyes, correctly judging that it'll take no more than 30 seconds for me to admit defeat and take her outside to play fetch with her tennis ball.

Yep. That's the secret to life, folks. Playing fetch with your dog. Plus I seem to get my most brilliant ideas thesis-/academic-/article-wise while watching my dog run after the ball like a crazy, but extremely happy, fool. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my academic work currently focuses on idiots, fools, and the like?.... Right. I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Act II coming next, folks!

*She hasn't seemed to upgrade to being a chick magnet yet. We're working on that.

Moleskine notebooks = WIN

2008-05-15T13:17:00.004-06:00

If you don't already have a collection of Moleskine notebooks, get some now. Those notebooks are effing brilliant. No stupid coils or lousy binding that doesn't let you lay out the book absolutely flat. Not to mention the band to keep the book shut so the pages don't get mangled in my bag.

They are definitely my bestest best friend (after you, of course, Chase. Yes, you may have a doggie treat since you were good during lunch. And, yes, I agree. Reading about the disabled in legal cases is a very good reason to have a nap in a library. Now may I get back to my post, please? Thank you.).

Where was I? Oh, yes. Those notebooks are full of WIN precisely because I never have to scramble for paper or an oversized notebook in my bag whenever I come up with a brill idea for my thesis or any other piece of academic writing. Just whip the notebook out of my pocket, scribble down my idea, put it back in my pocket, and off we go!

And, no, I am not providing examples here. My gestating ideas are mine, which means that

they are not fully formulated, so I am not going to go and look like an idiot on here (at least when possible),
I get first dibs on putting them into academic-speak and therefore getting credit for them, unless of course someone beats me to it first, which is NOT allowed, and
they're MINEMINEMINEMINE. Unless you ask nicely, of course.

My personal best is 20 pages in a single day. What's yours?

I has a blog?

2008-05-15T11:59:00.004-06:00

I've often been told that I should start a blog, seeing as I'm a graduate student who's finishing off his MA thesis. This, of course, means that I'm inevitably at the point in my academic career where I'm getting ready to start the process for applying for a PhD program, namely one in England. (Read: "You can set up a blog to help future grad students navigate the red tape inherent in applying to take up a grad degree overseas! Isn't than just an oh-so-useful and original rationale for a blog?!")

Oh God, not another one of those blogs. For one thing, there already are a few of those out there, and some of them are damn good. (Thanks, Eaquae Legit!)

But wait! You don't see too many blogs from graduate students who are deaf, do you? What about deaf graduate students who have service dogs who think that the definition of the Middle Ages is "ooh, time to go play fetch!" or "NAP TIME!"?

At the very least, I can promise you an interesting experience, you have to admit that.

Yep, that's my hook. Take it or leave it.

And speaking of leaving it, I should probably leave this post well-enough alone and get back to drawing up that table of 300+ legal cases involving disabled people in Plantagenet England....