Disability Studies Quarterly
Fall 2001, Volume 21, No. 4
page 1 <www.dsq-sds.org>
Copyright 2001 by the Society
for Disability Studies


Editor's Preface

David Pfeiffer

Michael Dorn and Deborah Metzel have put together an excellent symposium on disability geography. It is a new field within the discipline of geography and it is a growing one. The papers in this symposium represent some of the very best research on the cutting edge. We are greatful for their hard work. Perhaps the reader does not understand how much work is involved in bringing together and editing a symposium. If so, we invite all readers to submit a symposium idea for a future issue and then carry it out.

In addition to the symposium articles, Tanya Titchkosky contributes a perceptive article titled "Coming Out Disabled: The Politics of Understanding" which presents the ambiguity of a scholar without a visible disability conducting research and teaching in the field of disability studies. It is something to which many readers of Disability Studies Quarterly will viscerally relate.

Trevor R. Parmenter in his "Implementation of Disability Studies within Post Secondary Education: An Australian Perspective" presents the history of recent developments in academia in Australia. He treats disability studies as consisting of special education and rehabilitation counselling, not as a separate, quite different field.
Finally, the editor contributes an article on the distributive impact of US disability policy which says that the policy does not distribute resources very well. Instead, class, race, and gender govern such things as employment and income within the disability community as they do in society as a whole.

Book, Film, and Video Review Editor Elaine Makas again presents an excellent set of reviews. The University of Chicago Press sends information on one of their forthcoming books, Crippled Justice by Ruth O'Brien. The title alone should entice readers of the Quarterly to examine it. Beth Haller announces the reactivation of the News & Notes section that will have news, announcements, and information about Society members and others engaged in disability studies research both in the U.S.A. and internationally. And finally there is an announcement about the Fall 2001 issue of Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. It is a special issue on feminism and disability studies edited by Eva Fedder Kittay, Anita Silvers, and Susan Wendell.

David Pfeiffer, Editor