A new web design

That's right: With Volume 30, No 3/4 (2010) we are rolling out a new design for Disability Studies Quarterly and retiring the design that has served since 2000 when the journal first went to electronic publication. The "Block DSQ" will, we hope, become our new recognized logo. The creation of this design was a collaboration between the DSQ editorial team, the Ohio State University Libraries' team detailed to workwith DSQ, the Web Accessibility Center (WAC) at OSU, and our chief designer, Kaitlin Dyer. Kaitlin is currently an MFA student in poetry at San Diego State University and editor, blogger, and co-designer for another online journal, Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Arts of Persuasion. (You can see more of her work at: http://kaitlindyer.com/)

Combined summer/fall issue

We've combined the Summer/Fall 2010 issue to close out the 2010 year for several reasons. We have, as you've probably noticed, published an impressive and exciting number of "special issues" over the past two years while we've also moved into a new electronic publishing format (OJS) and a combination of these two factors has put us slightly behind in the projected publication dates for each issue over the past year. Combining the Summer/Fall contents and placing them in a publication date that falls between those two issues will help us bring the publication schedule back into some regularity for 2011. The several special issues over the past two years have also left us with a hefty number of individual manuscripts that have been accepted for publication but remained in a large "pending" pile here on our (electronic) editor's desks. We are cleaning off our desks (well, more or less) and we think you'll like the outcomes!

Two special sections

Still, there are two special "sections" in this issue as well. First, we open with a refreshing critical-creative essay offered by this year's SDS Senor Scholar, Rosemare Garland-Thomson. You'll enjoy getting to know "Roosevelt's Sister."

Second, a quartet of papers, introduced by Jim Ferris, all hum to the harmony of "Disability (in) Time." Responding to the 2009 theme of the Society for Disability Studies conference held in Tucson — "It's 'Our' Time" — four colleagues from the University of Toronto explore the experience of disability in various individual and collective spaces and time.

Kaleidoscopic contents

The remainder of the 17 articles in this issue represent the kaleidoscopic and colorful nature of our field these days. Hold it up to the light and be prepared to oooooh and ahhhhh a little. As you move the tube around, you will take in these possibilities: understanding hidden disability through the lens of narrative methodology; reading the work of Robert Rauschenberg through the impact of dyslexia on his life; qualitatively studying women living with multiple sclerosis; excavating the stigma of leprosy in 19th-century Hawaii; placing Marshall P. Wilder in disability (performance) history; documenting the role of disability in India's economic globalization and privatization; intersecting bisexuality and disability; locating the disabled body in Julia Taymor's production of Frida; unpacking how deaf mothers negotiate communication and activism in their families; wrestling with group (disability) identity in relationship to direct funding for people with disabilities; contemplating Daoist contributions to Disability Studies; exploring the politics of mourning (around disability) and the potential re-conception of "we" in that politics; conceptualizing Australian disability housing support policies through a human rights framework; claiming an Icelandic disability identity through life history research; interrogating the (out of control) rhetoric of gastrointestinal disorders; and engaging critical-historical analysis of the reception of Hugh Gregory Gallagher's work on Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Quite clearly, amazing things are happening in our field these days!

Creative work

We continue to endeavor to bring you creative work and always welcome more submissions in this area; we also encourage creative work from many genres. Two powerful poems grace this issue as illustrations of what we mean.

New book/film/media review editors

And too, amazing things are happening right here at DSQ headquarters. Following on Laurie Lambeth's four years of graceful, attentive, editorial work as our book and film Review Editor, Margaret Price and Amy Vidali have agreed to take up the (collaborative) reins as our new book and film (and media too!) Editors. Please read their energizing, engaging introductory letter and take up their call for even more expensive and innovative kinds of reviewing for future issues of DSQ. We're counting on you!