Understanding media : the extensions of man

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America.

Objective: To review a type of narrative identity, disability identity, which is a potentially important topic concerning the social psychology of disability. Disability identity entails a positive sense of self, feelings of connection to, or solidarity with, the disability community. A coherent dis

Disability identity: exploring narrative accounts of disability.

The Disabled People’s Movement (DPM) in the UK rejects the view that disability is an illness. For the DPM it is the social processes of discrimination and oppression that create the material circumstances out of which solidarity and politicisation arise. The DPM has also been shy about impairment, arguing that it is generally irrelevant to the issue of disability and that a clear distinction between impairment and disability is necessary if disability is to be understood as a basis for identity politics. The biological citizens that support embodied health movements use impairment, genetic status, biomedical diagnosis and classification as calling cards that signal their claims to identity. Whilst the DPM has challenged medical hegemony and scientific ideas, many ‘biosocial’ groups embrace the specialised medical and scientific knowledge associated with their ‘condition’, particularly where it might be used to enhance their claims to citizenship. This paper argues that disability activism in the UK is bi...

Disability activisms: social model stalwarts and biological citizens

The academic field of disability studies has expanded rapidly over the last two decades or so. With that expansion has also come some growing ambiguity about exactly what is meant by the term “disa...

Disability Studies: What is it and what Difference does it Make?:

My Body Politic: A Memoir

When Americans today think of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers, they may picture the smiling figure on boxes of oatmeal But since their arrival in the American colonies in the 1650s, Quakers' spiritual values and social habits have set them apart from other Americans And their example - whether real or imagined - has served as a religious conscience for an expanding nation Portrayals of Quakers - from dangerous and anarchic figures in seventeenth-century theological debates to moral exemplars in twentieth-century theater and film (Grace Kelly in High Noon, for example) - reflected attempts by writers, speech makers, and dramatists to grapple with the troubling social issues of the day As foils to more widely held religious, political, and moral values, members of the Society of Friends became touchstones in national discussions about pacifism, abolition, gender equality, consumer culture, and modernity Spanning four centuries, "Imaginary Friends" takes readers through the shifting representations of Quaker life in a wide range of literary and visual genres, from theological debates, missionary work records, political theory, and biography to fiction, poetry, theater, and film It illustrates the ways that, during the long history of Quakerism in the United States, these 'imaginary' Friends have offered a radical model of morality, piety, and anti-modernity against which the evolving culture has measured itself

Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture, 1650–1950

The Blind Authoress of New York: Helen De Kroyft and the Uses of Disability in Antebellum America

One of the more memorable scenes from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) occurs during Eliza Harris's flight from slavery, after she arrives at the safe domestic haven of Rachel and Simeon Halliday, members of a devout Quaker household who have offered her temporary lodging on behalf of the Underground Railroad. It is in this orderly place of cleanliness, courtesy, thrift, good will, and piety that the fugitive slave Eliza finally is enabled to sleep soundly, and subsequently to dream "of a beautiful country, --a land, it seemed to her, of rest,--green shores, pleasant islands, and beautifully glittering water; and there, in a house which kind voices told her was a home, she saw her boy playing, free and happy child." And, indeed, upon waking the next morning, Eliza finds herself reunited with son and husband in the antebellum social oasis that is the Quaker settlement. If Uncle Tom's Cabin may be understood, in part, as promoting an idealized form of American family life, then surely the Quaker Halliday family is one of the preeminent examples of that domestic sphere. (1) Temperate and serene, the men, women, and children in Stowe's Quaker settlement exude Christian virtue, moral gravity, robust health, (2) and personal strength; for them, social justice begins at home, and the Quaker doctrine of an "inner light" for each believer manifests itself in an environment of mutuality, candor, and dignity. Here, age is respected and venerated, especially among the women, whose beauty seems to ripen with the years rather than fade. No youthful beauty, the carefully coiffed and plainly dressed (3) Rachel Halliday possesses "one of those faces that time seems to touch only to brighten and adorn." Here, too, the authority of patriarchy largely gives way to the guiding genius of cheerful and industrious women. Simeon Halliday, "a tall, straight, muscular man," speaks few words and stands clear of the more-important kitchen labors of the household's women, who bustle about creating "an atmosphere of mutual confidence and good fellowship." A rare moral exemplar among Stowe's male characters in the novel, however, it is Simeon who chastens his young son for hating the slaveholders who would have prevented George and Eliza from living in peace. Instead, the fictional Quaker patriarch serenely insists upon unconditional love and benevolence, and that he "would do even the same for the slaveholder as for the slave, if the Lord brought him to my door in affliction." (4) However, despite all of their admirable morality--which extended to the all-important notion of equality for women--Stowe's novel does not linger long among these Friends of the Quaker settlement. For all the optimism expressed about these believers in the "inner light" of Quakerism, Uncle Tom's Cabin does not directly advocate a turn to Quakerism as a solution for the problem of American social ills. As one critic has noted, while highlighting the otherness of Quaker clothing and dialect, Stowe's novel also clearly indicates her admiration for the humanitarianism of Quakers. There are limits to her representations, however, for in the novel "no Quaker refers to the Inner Light, no Quaker discusses or even alludes to an inner awareness of spirituality, no Quaker refers to Christ." (5) Quakers in the novel are fashioned as exemplary figures of Christian virtue, but do not dominate the narrative as a whole; they are presented as model Americans, but just as clearly their religious world seems to be little more than a fantasy or an impossibility on the larger scale that interests Stowe. In this way, Stowe follows a formula that would become familiar over the course of the nineteenth century. Quakerism's representation in fiction as a set of exemplary American religious and social practices appears alongside its failure to attract large numbers of followers. Consistently in the socially progressive vanguard, and commonly used in fiction as one of the highest expressions of Christianity, Quakers in early American fiction are deployed for our admiration, but also enlist our recognition of their broader failure to capture American religious enthusiasm in any significant way. …

Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in Early American Fiction

In the years just before and after 1908, when the first mass-produced automobiles were sold, a substantial practical, sporting and touristic literature was produced on the subject of motoring Much of this literature, which is surveyed and analysed here, focused on long-distance motor racing and personal accounts of motor adventuring in Europe, Asia and America These reports were often written by a generation of wealthy drivers, who were among the earliest users of automobiles However, not every work of early motoring literature was produced by the wealthy Travel journalists, popular novelists and sporting enthusiasts keen to share their experiences of motoring saw the emergent automobile experience not merely as a practical means of travel but as radically modern technology capable of providing pleasure, knowledge and heightened consciousness when used for high-speed racing, long-distance adventuring and serendipitous travel

James Emmett Ryan

Papers

My Body Politic: A Memoir

Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture, 1650–1950

The Blind Authoress of New York: Helen De Kroyft and the Uses of Disability in Antebellum America

Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in Early American Fiction

Cars of destiny: Writing the golden age of motoring