Blogs

Below are a list of questions I hope to explore throughout the semester that concern the relations among disability studies, mental illness, and literature:

What brings me to studying disability studies and mental illness in relation to literature?  The summer after my freshman year I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD.  My journey with OCD has been a long one.  There was a time when my obsessions and rituals took up nearly every hour of the day, when I could barely leave my house, and when my parents thought they had lost their daughter forever.  When my ability to function was quickly declining, I decided to take a medical leave of absence from Bryn Mawr my sophomore year.  I enrolled in an intensive OCD treatment program, which gave me back the life I had lost and I was able to return to Bryn Mawr the following year.  

The topic of evolution is able to encompass many ideas, beyond just the realm of organisms changing and developing. However, based on the perspective with which one views the world, evolution may not even be possible. As discussed in our class the Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories, there are two main types of stories: foundational and non-foundational. These two types of stories differ greatly with regard to the possibility for change. A foundational versus non-foundational outlook on life reflects the different effects and potential for diversity among individuals.
 

Hillary Godwin

February 10, 2011

Dalke – GIST

The Politics of Beauty in the Western World:

Re-Constructing Female Leadership through the Media Monster

 Audrey Johnston

Evolution/Stories/Diversity

Professor Grobstein and Professor Dalke

Bryn Mawr, Spring 2011

Web Project #1

2/11/11

            Rhetorical Landscape In The Origin of Species

Intersex and transgender conditions in ancient cultures will be explored in the style of a book we read in class by Joan Roughgarden titled Evolution’s Rainbow. The examples show cases in which transgender and intersex conditions were encountered throughout history. These examples are sometimes instances were atypical attitudes were taken towards the conditions. I use said instances as evidence that Intersex and Transgendered individuals have been surprisingly common in human history and in learning about it’s occurrences, the possibility exists for societal acceptance of the condition as falling in a spectrum of normalcy. 

Muna Aghaalnemer

Prof. Anne Dalke

Gender and Technology paper 1
February 11th 2011

Gender and Categories