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Of timely interest

2012 Tyler Rigg Award Winner

Congratulations to this year’s winner of the Tyler Rigg Award for best article published in Disability Studies Quarterly in 2011, Essaka Joshua. Joshua is Teaching Professor and Joseph Morahan Director of the College Seminar at the University of Notre Dame. Her prize-winning article is entitled, “The Drifting Language of Architectural Accessibility in Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris 31.3 (2011). Full text is available via the DSQ interface: dsq-sds.org

2012 Senior Scholar Named

The Society for Disability Studies (SDS) is pleased to announce the recipient of the 2012 Senior Scholar Award: Carol J. Gill, Ph.D.

Dr. Gill is an Associate Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. She got involved in disability activism, independent living and disability studies in Los Angeles, where she met Irving Zola, Diane Coleman and many other emerging leaders and activists in the disability movement. She worked as a rehabilitation psychologist and she directed a pioneering disability studies program at the University of Southern California. After she returned to Illinois in 1996, she joined the faculty of the University of Illinois at Chicago and founded the Chicago Institute of Disability Research, which she continues to direct today.

Dr. Gill has made diverse, significant, and lasting contributions to the establishment of disability studies as a scholarly field. Dr. Gill has made significant research contributions in areas of disability identity and community, disability culture; sexuality; parenting; women with disabilities’ access to healthcare; training of healthcare professionals to provide more appropriate care to persons with disabilities; and perhaps most notably, in her scholarly writings that challenge the devaluation of disabled people in bioethical debates.

Congratulations to Dr. Gill, and many thanks to all of the individuals who participated in the SDS Senior Scholar Award process.

About SDS

The Society for Disability Studies (SDS) is a scholarly organization that is dedicated to the cause of promoting the disability studies as an academic discipline. According to SDS’s Mission Statement, through research, artistic production, teaching and activism, the Society for Disability Studies seeks to augment understanding of disability in all cultures and historical periods, to promote greater awareness of the experiences of disabled people, and to advocate for social change.

More than twenty-five years of rich history has enabled the organization to reach national and international members with expertise ranging from advocacy to perspectives on disability from variety of disciplines. Such expertise are often at display at SDS’s annual conference, where hundreds of participants gather every year to share latest research and theory. Members also engage in vibrant discussions on member-only electronic lists with participation ranging from some of the most senior scholars in the field to rising graduate student stars.

SDS’s proudest accomplishment is one of the most successful and the leading journal on disability studies. International in scope, the Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ) provides scholars, activists, artists with disabilities, and others to consider the experience of disability in the written form.

We welcome your participation. Use the navigation links located on the left-hand side to learn more about DSQ and other ways to be involved with the Society for Disability Studies.

In coming days exciting information regarding the SDS 2011 Conference will be posted here.