Careers: August 2006 Archives

In random googling of the net, I came across the Disability History Association. I've never heard of them, but they going to have their 121st annual meeting, so they must have been around for a while. Interesting sections of their website include their Teaching Resources and recent publications.

This question came in as a comment to an older blog entry:

How do you choose which school to apply to? I've heard conflicting advice (choose the school based on the faculty member you want to work with [be willing to take Michigan over Harvard], go for the name [Yale over Berkeley, for example], etc, etc)

Posted by: mac at May 31, 2005 3:09 AM

I thought I'd repost the response as a separate entry as it might get otherwise missed and some applicants have been asking me similar questions recently. It's been slightly edited.

I've recently gotten several e-mails from people interested in graduate programs in Deaf Studies or Disability Studies within Anthropology. I've come up with the following list to help people narrow down their choice of schools. It's still very tentative and I would greatly appreciate feedback from people who know of other programs.

Note that for the most part I have only listed places where there are faculty active in Deaf Studies or Disability Studies. However, most of us are first generation scholars -- we received our PhDs at programs where there was nobody who focused in Deaf culture or disability. I do not think we are yet at the second generation of scholarship yet -- where people will be studying more or less in specialized programs. Thus, you should not narrow your focus to only the programs listed, but also look for programs that are strong either in your areal speciality (geographic region) or topical speciality (such as language ideology; biomedicine and social institutions; etc.). You can always ask one of the people listed below to serve as an external committee member or dissertation reader.