Letters with Smokie: Blindness, Guide Dogs & More Than Human Questions
Authored on December 9, 2023Joeita speaks with Rod Michalko about his book "Letters with Smokie" discussing blindness and what it can reveal about the relationship between humans and animals.
About “Letters with Smokie”
From University of Manitoba Press:
Leave it to a dog to put the “human” back in “humanities”
In September 2020, Rod Michalko wrote to friend and colleague Dan Goodley, congratulating him on the release of his latest book, Disability and Other Human Questions. Joking that his late guide dog, Smokie, had taken offense to the suggestion that disability was purely a human question, Michalko shared a few thoughts on behalf of his dog. When Goodley wrote back—to Smokie—so began an epistolic exchange that would continue for the next seven months.
As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world and the realities of lockdown-imposed isolation set in, the Smokie letters provided the friends a space in which to come together in a lively exploration of human-animal relationships and to interrogate disability as disruption, disturbance, and art. Just as he did in life, Smokie guides. In these pages, he offers wisdom about the world, love, friendship, and even The Beatles. His canine observations of human experience provide an avenue into some of the ways blindness might be reconceptualized and “befriended.”
Uninhibited by the trappings of traditional academic inquiry, Michalko and Goodley are unleashed, free to wander, to wonder, and to provoke within the bonds of trust and respect. Funny and thoughtful, the result is a refreshing exploration and re-evaluation of learned cultural misunderstandings of disability.
Highlights:
- Opening Remarks on Guide Dogs (00:00)
- Introducing Rod Michalko (01:03)
- Who is Smokie and Why is Smokie Writing Letters? (01:38)
- How Did this Correspondence Between Friends Evolve into a Book? (03:00)
- Was it Challenging to Adopt Smokie’s Perspective? (04:06)
- How Can Animals Deepen Our Understanding of Blindness and Disability? (05:06)
- Moving Towards a Different Concept of Blindness (07:17)
- First Day Out with a Guide Dog (08:55)
- Appreciating the Blurriness of Life (10:37)
- Guide Dogs as Experts on Blindness (12:58)
- Shifting One’s Vantage Point (14:50)
- Rethinking Human-Animal Relationships (16:48)
- How Does Journeying with a Guide Dog Change Your Perspective on the Design of Physical Spaces? (18:51)
- Disability and Disrupting Normalcy? (21:07)
- Why is the Theme of Community So Important? (23:11)
- The Personal Impact of Revisiting Guide Dog Relationship (24:53)
- More Letters with Smokie? (26:47)
- Show Close (27:32)
Guest Bio:
Rod Michalko is a retired professor from the University of Toronto where he taught disability studies. His current writing, both fiction and non-fiction, stems from his experience of blindness.
“Letters with Smokie” was co-written by Dan Goodley, Professor of Disability Studies and Education at the University of Sheffield. His Previous books include Disability and Other Human Questions (Emerald, 2020) and Disability Studies (second edition, Sage, 2016).
Links
Learn more about “Letters with Smokie” on AMI Audiobook Review
About The Pulse
On The Pulse, host Joeita Gupta brings us closer to issues impacting the disability community across Canada.
Joeita Gupta has nurtured a life-long dream to work in radio! She's blind, moved to Toronto in 2004 and got her start in radio at CKLN, 88.1 FM in Toronto. A former co-host of AMI-audio's Live from Studio 5, Joeita also works full-time at a nonprofit in Toronto, specializing in housing/tenant rights.
Find Joeita on Twitter: @JoeitaGupta
The Pulse airs weekly on AMI-audio. For more information, visit https://www.ami.ca/ThePulse/recent_ep...
About AMI
AMI is a not-for-profit media company that entertains, informs and empowers Canadians who are blind or partially sighted. Operating three broadcast services, AMI-tv and AMI-audio in English and AMI-télé in French, AMI’s vision is to establish and support a voice for Canadians with disabilities, representing their interests, concerns and values through inclusion, representation, accessible media, reflection, representation and portrayal.
Learn more at AMI.ca
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Disability & Ageing: Ann Leahy
Authored on December 2, 2023Dr Ann Leahy, a PhD graduate of Maynooth University Sociology Department, recently published her new book Disability & Ageing: Towards a Critical Perspective.
This book challenges assumptions about impairment in later life and the residual nature of the ‘fourth age’. It proposes that the experience of ‘disability’ in older age reaches beyond the bodily context and can involve not only a challenge to a sense of value and meaning in life, but also ongoing efforts in response.
Highlights:
- Introduction (00:00)
- Opening Remarks “Ageing Parents” (01:12)
- Introducing Ann Leahy (02:27)
- Linkages Between Disability & Ageing (03:01)
- Importance of Self-Identifying as Disabled (04:24)
- “Disability Identity in Older Age” Study (05:28)
- Difficulties in Defining Disability (06:58)
- Key Findings from Research Interviews (09:15)
- Divisions Between “Old Age” and “Disability” Services (11:40)
- Ageing Out of Public Services and Programs (13:17)
- Problem of Medical Model of Disability Being Pervasive Amongst Older Adults (17:15)
- Disability Stigma (19:22)
- Younger Adults with Disabilities Living in Nursing Homes (21:40)
- Alternatives to Nursing Homes & Institutionalization (25:22)
- Show Close (27:25)
Ann Leahy joined the ERC Consolidator funded project, DANCING (Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union Law: Exploring New Paths), in September 2020. Her main focus is qualitative research on cultural participation by people with disabilities. She has an MA in Social Justice and Public Policy (first class honours) and a PhD in Sociology. Her PhD was an interdisciplinary qualitative study that examined the intersection between disability and ageing, engaging with literature across both areas.
Her academic awards include a John and Pat Hume Scholarship (2013) from Maynooth University and an Irish Research Council Employment-based PhD Scholarship (2014). In 2019 she was awarded a Government of Ireland, Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship to disseminate the findings of her PhD thesis.
Ann also has a background in law. Early in her career, she qualified as a Solicitor and worked for some years in commercial law with McCann FitzGerald, solicitors. She subsequently changed direction, working for nearly two decades in the NGO voluntary sector. She was Assistant CEO of Age & Opportunity for over a decade with responsibility for policy and public affairs, as well as for the organisation’s work on arts and culture.
In addition to disability and ageing, her areas of research include equality, poverty and healthcare, and she has completed a body of research and policy analysis on these issues for Social Justice Ireland. She has also extensive experience of public-policy processes across a variety of areas and has served on several policy and advocacy committees.
Reference:
Follow Ann Leahy on X / Twitter: @ALeahyResearch
“Disability Identity in Older Age: Exploring Social Processes That Influence Disability Identification With Aging” from Disability Studies Quarterly
What is Ablenationalism? Anastasia Todd
Authored on November 25, 2023Joeita speaks about "Affective Ablenationalism" with Anastasia Todd from the University of Kentucky.
SUMMARY
An in-depth conversation about disability and ablenationalism, exploring how disabled individuals are often coded as able-bodied in the imagined community of the nation.
Using the story of Trevor Maroshek, a former Navy SEAL, and his service dog, Chopper as a case study, we examine the concept of service dogs as a technology of rehabilitation, allowing disabled individuals to fit into the able-bodied norm and the white American nuclear family, the veneration of Chopper as a national hero and the role of military dogs in securing the nation state. Looking at the real-world implications such as confusion about the rights of people with service dogs and the discrimination they face.
Anastasia Todd is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky. Broadly, her research investigates the intersections of disability and girlhood from a feminist disability studies perspective. Her forthcoming book, Cripping Girlhood (winner of the 2022 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities), is interested in what happens and what it means when certain disabled girl subjects gain cultural recognition and visibility as “American girls, too,” to use the words of Melissa Shang, who in 2014 created a viral Change.org petition imploring American Girl to create a disabled doll of the year. The book explores the promise and peril of this newfound cultural visibility for select disabled girls. In examining representations and self-representations of disabled girls and girlhoods across the mediascape at the beginning of the twenty-first century, spanning HBO documentaries to TikTok, Cripping Girlhood uncovers the variegated ways the figure of the disabled girl is imbued with meaning and mobilized as a spectacular representational symbol. Cripping Girlhood also explores how disabled girls, more than symbolic figures to be used in others’ narratives, circulate their own capacious re-envisioning of what it means to be a disabled girl. The book uncovers the cultural and political work that disabled girls’ self-representational practices perform, from cultivating disability community through generating intimacy online, to affirming the value of care labor and interdependence across the species barrier.
Highlights:
- Show Open (00:00)
- Introducing Anastasia Todd (01:59)
- What is Ablenationalism? (02:27)
- History of Reliance on Service Dogs (07:00)
- Technology of Rehabilitation (08:36)
- How does the story of Chopper Perpetuate the Nation State? (10:53)
- The State of Veteran Mental Health and Wellbeing (16:40)
- Reciprocity in Service Dog Relationships (19:23)
- Service Dogs as Saviors (23:10)
- Show Close (28:13)
Links:
Pre-order Cripping Girlhood (University of Michigan Press, 2024)
Her new research project, in collaboration with Heather Switzer (WGS, Arizona State University) explores the intersection of invisible disability and young womanhood through creating and analyzing an archive of invisible disability narratives. As a cripistemological intervention, the project seeks to expand disability studies by taking seriously bodyminds that experience ableism yet have an uneasy and tenuous relationship with disability as it has been conventionally defined—that is, as physical, unchanging, and visible.
About The Pulse:
On The Pulse, host Joeita Gupta brings us closer to issues impacting the disability community across Canada.
Joeita Gupta has nurtured a life-long dream to work in radio! She's blind, moved to Toronto in 2004 and got her start in radio at CKLN, 88.1 FM in Toronto. A former co-host of AMI-audio's Live from Studio 5, Joeita also works full-time at a nonprofit in Toronto, specializing in housing/tenant rights.
Find Joeita on Twitter: @JoeitaGupta
The Pulse airs weekly on AMI-audio. For more information, visit https://www.ami.ca/ThePulse/recent_episodes
Learn more at AMI.ca
Connect on Twitter @AccessibleMedia
On Instagram @accessiblemediainc
On Facebook at @AccessibleMediaInc
On TikTok @accessiblemediainc
Email feedback@ami.ca
