Mike Kent – författare

Disability impacts everyone in some way. Approximately 10-20% of the world’s population live with disability, and the associated issues affect not just these individuals but also their friends, family, and colleagues. When looking at it this way, it is strange that disability continues to be thought of as an anomaly—either as a medical problem located in a damaged body or something that exists exclusively outside the body, in a society that takes little account of non-normative bodies.Critical disability studies both questions these existing notions of disability and interrogates how they have become a part of the academic attitude towards the field. As the first comprehensive handbook on critical disability studies, this volume provides an authoritative overview of the subject. Including 32 chapters written by established scholars and emerging, next-generation researchers it also includes contributions from activists, writers, and practitioners from the global north and the global south.Divided into three parts: Representation, art, and culture; Media, technology, and communication; and Activism and the life course, it offers discussions on core critical disability studies topics including the social model, technology studies, trauma studies, representation, and queer theory, as well as ground-breaking work on emerging and cutting-edge areas such as neurodiversity and critical approaches in the Middle East, United States, Australia, and Europe.It is required reading for all academics and students working in not just critical disability studies but sociology, digital accessibility and inclusion, health and social care, and social and public policy more broadly.

Since the first MOOC was launched at the University of Manitoba in 2008, this new form of the massification of higher education has been a rollercoaster ride for the university sector. The New York Times famously declared 2012 to be the year of the MOOC. However, by 2014, the number of academic leaders who believed the model was unsustainable doubled to more than 50%. While the MOOC hype has somewhat subsided, the attitudes and anxieties of this peak time can still be seen influencing universities and their administrations. This is the first volume that addresses Massive Open Online Courses from a post-MOOC perspective. We move beyond the initial hype and revolutionary promises of the peak-MOOC period and take a sober look at what endures in an area that is still rapidly growing, albeit without the headlines. This book explores the future of the MOOC in higher education by examining what went right, what went wrong and where to next for the massification of higher education and online learning and teaching. The chapters in this collection address these questions from a wide variety of different backgrounds, methodologies and regional perspectives. They explore learner experiences, the move towards course for credit, innovative design, transformations and implications of the MOOC in turn.This book is valuable reading for students and academics interested in education, eLearning, globalisation and information services.

This book explores the opportunities and challenges people with disabilities experience in the context of digital games from the perspective of three related areas: representation, access and inclusion, and community.Drawing on key concerns in disability media studies, the book brings together scholars from disability studies and game studies, alongside game developers, educators, and disability rights activists, to reflect upon the increasing visibility of disabled characters in digital games. Chapters explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability on platforms such as Twitch, Minecraft, and Tingyou, while also addressing future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities within gaming given the rise of virtual reality applications, and augmented games such as Pokémon Go. The book asks how game developers can attempt to represent diverse abilities, taking games such as BlindSide and Overwatch as examples.A significant collection for scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of digital games, this volume will be of interest across several disciplines including game studies, game design and development, internet, visual, cultural, communication and media studies, as well as disability studies.

This collection identifies the key tensions and conflicts being debated within the field of critical disability studies and provides both an outline of the field in its current form and offers manifestos for its future direction. Traversing a number of disciplines from science and technology studies to maternal studies, the collection offers a transdisciplinary vision for the future of critical disability studies. Some common thematic concerns emerge across the book such as digital futures, the usefulness of anger, creativity, family as disability allies, intersectionality, ethics, eugenics, accessibility and interdisciplinarity. However, the contributors who write as either disabled people or allies do not proceed from a singular approach to disability, often reflecting different or even opposing positions on these issues. Containing contributions from established and new voices in disability studies outlining their own manifesto for the future of the field, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students working within the fields of disability studies, cultural studies, sociology, law, history and education. The concerns introduced here are further explored in its sister volume Interdisciplinary approaches to disability: looking towards the future.

How can a deep engagement with disability studies change our understanding of sociology, literary studies, gender studies, aesthetics, bioethics, social work, law, education, or history? Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability (the companion volume to Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies) identifies both the practical and theoretical implications of such an interdisciplinary dialogue and challenges people in disability studies as well as other disciplinary fields to critically reflect on their professional praxis in terms of theory, practice, and methods.Topics covered include interdisciplinary outlooks ranging from media studies, games studies, education, performance, history and curation through to theology and immunology. Perspectives are drawn from different regions from the European Union to the Global South with chapters that draw on a range of different national backgrounds. Our contributors who write as either disabled people or allies do not proceed from a singular approach to disability, often reflecting different or even opposing positions. The collection features contributions from both established and new voices in international disability studies outlining their own visions for the future of the field. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability will be of interest to all scholars and students working within the fields of disability studies, cultural studies, sociology, law history and education. The concerns raised here are further in Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies.

This book brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address critical perspectives on Chinese language social media, internationalizing the state of social media studies beyond the Anglophone paradigm. The collection focuses on the intersections between Chinese language social media and disability, celebrity, sexuality, interpersonal communication, charity, diaspora, public health, political activism and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The book is not only rich in its theoretical perspectives but also in its methodologies. Contributors use both qualitative and quantitative methods to study Chinese social media and its social–cultural–political implications, such as case studies, in-depth interviews, participatory observations, discourse analysis, content analysis and data mining.

An Education in Facebook? examines and critiques the role of Facebook in the evolving landscape of higher education. At times a mandated part of classroom use, at others an informal network for students, Facebook has become an inevitable component of college life, acting alternately as an advertising, recruitment and learning tool. But what happens when educators use a corporate product, which exists outside of the control of universities, to educate students?An Education in Facebook? provides a broad discussion of the issues educators are already facing on college campuses worldwide, particularly in areas such as privacy, copyright and social media etiquette. By examining current uses of Facebook in university settings, this book offers both a thorough analytical critique as well as practical advice for educators and administrators looking to find ways to thoughtfully integrate Facebook and other digital communication tools into their classrooms and campuses.

An Education in Facebook? examines and critiques the role of Facebook in the evolving landscape of higher education. At times a mandated part of classroom use, at others an informal network for students, Facebook has become an inevitable component of college life, acting alternately as an advertising, recruitment and learning tool. But what happens when educators use a corporate product, which exists outside of the control of universities, to educate students?An Education in Facebook? provides a broad discussion of the issues educators are already facing on college campuses worldwide, particularly in areas such as privacy, copyright and social media etiquette. By examining current uses of Facebook in university settings, this book offers both a thorough analytical critique as well as practical advice for educators and administrators looking to find ways to thoughtfully integrate Facebook and other digital communication tools into their classrooms and campuses.

Disability and New Media examines how digital design is triggering disability when it could be a solution. Video and animation now play a prominent role in the World Wide Web and new types of protocols have been developed to accommodate this increasing complexity. However, as this has happened, the potential for individual users to control how the content is displayed has been diminished. Accessibility choices are often portrayed as merely technical decisions but they are highly political and betray a disturbing trend of ableist assumption that serve to exclude people with disability. It has been argued that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Kent and Ellis build on this notion using more recent Web 2.0 phenomena, social networking sites, virtual worlds and file sharing. Many of the studies on disability and the web have focused on the early web, prior to the development of social networking applications such as Facebook, YouTube and Second Life. This book discusses an array of such applications that have grown within and alongside Web 2.0, and analyzes how they both prevent and embrace the inclusion of people with disability.

Disability and New Media examines how digital design is triggering disability when it could be a solution. Video and animation now play a prominent role in the World Wide Web and new types of protocols have been developed to accommodate this increasing complexity. However, as this has happened, the potential for individual users to control how the content is displayed has been diminished. Accessibility choices are often portrayed as merely technical decisions but they are highly political and betray a disturbing trend of ableist assumption that serve to exclude people with disability. It has been argued that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. Kent and Ellis build on this notion using more recent Web 2.0 phenomena, social networking sites, virtual worlds and file sharing. Many of the studies on disability and the web have focused on the early web, prior to the development of social networking applications such as Facebook, YouTube and Second Life. This book discusses an array of such applications that have grown within and alongside Web 2.0, and analyzes how they both prevent and embrace the inclusion of people with disability.

This book explores the opportunities and challenges people with disabilities experience in the context of digital games from the perspective of three related areas: representation, access and inclusion, and community.Drawing on key concerns in disability media studies, the book brings together scholars from disability studies and game studies, alongside game developers, educators, and disability rights activists, to reflect upon the increasing visibility of disabled characters in digital games. Chapters explore the contemporary gaming environment as it relates to disability on platforms such as Twitch, Minecraft, and Tingyou, while also addressing future possibilities and pitfalls for people with disabilities within gaming given the rise of virtual reality applications, and augmented games such as Pokémon Go. The book asks how game developers can attempt to represent diverse abilities, taking games such as BlindSide and Overwatch as examples.A significant collection for scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of digital games, this volume will be of interest across several disciplines including game studies, game design and development, internet, visual, cultural, communication and media studies, as well as disability studies.

This book provides an accessible introduction to critical disability studies, which helps students question existing notions of disability and interrogate how these have become embedded in our social and cultural understanding of disability.This interdisciplinary text, authored by a team of leading critical disability scholars, defines and explains the core foundational concepts and models referred to in disability studies literature: the medical model, the tragedy model of disability, the social model, the cultural model, the human rights model, the affirmation model and critical disability studies. These seven particular models have been selected due to the centrality of their influence on people with disability, wider society and culture and the academic study of disability. These models provide students with new ways of understanding how disability interfaces with society and offer students from a variety of disciplines an important foundation for any further formal study in this area. This text is also co-designed with students studying models of disability, so the authors fully understand the issues students experience when learning about these models, and this text actively addresses how to overcome them.This book will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying critical disability studies from various disciplines including media and cultural studies, communication studies, disability studies and sociology.

This book provides an accessible introduction to critical disability studies, which helps students question existing notions of disability and interrogate how these have become embedded in our social and cultural understanding of disability.This interdisciplinary text, authored by a team of leading critical disability scholars, defines and explains the core foundational concepts and models referred to in disability studies literature: the medical model, the tragedy model of disability, the social model, the cultural model, the human rights model, the affirmation model and critical disability studies. These seven particular models have been selected due to the centrality of their influence on people with disability, wider society and culture and the academic study of disability. These models provide students with new ways of understanding how disability interfaces with society and offer students from a variety of disciplines an important foundation for any further formal study in this area. This text is also co-designed with students studying models of disability, so the authors fully understand the issues students experience when learning about these models, and this text actively addresses how to overcome them.This book will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying critical disability studies from various disciplines including media and cultural studies, communication studies, disability studies and sociology.

Disability impacts everyone in some way. Approximately 10-20% of the world’s population live with disability, and the associated issues affect not just these individuals but also their friends, family, and colleagues. When looking at it this way, it is strange that disability continues to be thought of as an anomaly—either as a medical problem located in a damaged body or something that exists exclusively outside the body, in a society that takes little account of non-normative bodies.Critical disability studies both questions these existing notions of disability and interrogates how they have become a part of the academic attitude towards the field. As the first comprehensive handbook on critical disability studies, this volume provides an authoritative overview of the subject. Including 32 chapters written by established scholars and emerging, next-generation researchers it also includes contributions from activists, writers, and practitioners from the global north and the global south.Divided into three parts: Representation, art, and culture; Media, technology, and communication; and Activism and the life course, it offers discussions on core critical disability studies topics including the social model, technology studies, trauma studies, representation, and queer theory, as well as ground-breaking work on emerging and cutting-edge areas such as neurodiversity and critical approaches in the Middle East, United States, Australia, and Europe.It is required reading for all academics and students working in not just critical disability studies but sociology, digital accessibility and inclusion, health and social care, and social and public policy more broadly.

This book brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address critical perspectives on Chinese language social media, internationalizing the state of social media studies beyond the Anglophone paradigm. The collection focuses on the intersections between Chinese language social media and disability, celebrity, sexuality, interpersonal communication, charity, diaspora, public health, political activism and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The book is not only rich in its theoretical perspectives but also in its methodologies. Contributors use both qualitative and quantitative methods to study Chinese social media and its social–cultural–political implications, such as case studies, in-depth interviews, participatory observations, discourse analysis, content analysis and data mining.

This collection identifies the key tensions and conflicts being debated within the field of critical disability studies and provides both an outline of the field in its current form and offers manifestos for its future direction. Traversing a number of disciplines from science and technology studies to maternal studies, the collection offers a transdisciplinary vision for the future of critical disability studies. Some common thematic concerns emerge across the book such as digital futures, the usefulness of anger, creativity, family as disability allies, intersectionality, ethics, eugenics, accessibility and interdisciplinarity. However, the contributors who write as either disabled people or allies do not proceed from a singular approach to disability, often reflecting different or even opposing positions on these issues. Containing contributions from established and new voices in disability studies outlining their own manifesto for the future of the field, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students working within the fields of disability studies, cultural studies, sociology, law, history and education. The concerns introduced here are further explored in its sister volume Interdisciplinary approaches to disability: looking towards the future.

How can a deep engagement with disability studies change our understanding of sociology, literary studies, gender studies, aesthetics, bioethics, social work, law, education, or history? Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability (the companion volume to Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies) identifies both the practical and theoretical implications of such an interdisciplinary dialogue and challenges people in disability studies as well as other disciplinary fields to critically reflect on their professional praxis in terms of theory, practice, and methods.Topics covered include interdisciplinary outlooks ranging from media studies, games studies, education, performance, history and curation through to theology and immunology. Perspectives are drawn from different regions from the European Union to the Global South with chapters that draw on a range of different national backgrounds. Our contributors who write as either disabled people or allies do not proceed from a singular approach to disability, often reflecting different or even opposing positions. The collection features contributions from both established and new voices in international disability studies outlining their own visions for the future of the field. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability will be of interest to all scholars and students working within the fields of disability studies, cultural studies, sociology, law history and education. The concerns raised here are further in Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies.

Social media is popularly seen as an important media for people with disability in terms of communication, exchange and activism. These sites potentially increase both employment and leisure opportunities for one of the most traditionally isolated groups in society. However, the offline inaccessible environment has, to a certain degree, been replicated online and particularly in social networking sites. Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives yet the impact on people with disabilities has gone largely unscrutinised. Similarly, while social media and disability are often both observed through a focus on the Western, developed and English-speaking world, different global perspectives are often overlooked. This collection explores the opportunities and challenges social media represents for the social inclusion of people with disabilities from a variety of different global perspectives that include Africa, Arabia and Asia along with European, American and Australasian perspectives and experiences.

Scholars have long recognized the media’s role in shaping and reflecting the way we see the world, ourselves, and others. In particular, they have understood that the media plays a vital part in the social and cultural construction of disability. Moreover, as new types of media proliferate, and become increasingly important in our daily lives, addressing the sometimes difficult questions surrounding the relationship between disability and the media is more important than ever. In particular, what is the media’s role in the disablement of people with impairments and can it also act as a powerful agent of change? And how are attitudes towards people with disabilities constantly reinscribed through media such as television, film, and the Internet?Now, this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies series enables users readily to access and make sense of the essential texts of disability-and-media scholarship. The collection is organized into four principal parts: Disability and the Mass Media; Disability and Film; Disability and Popular Culture; and Disability, the Internet, and New Media.Fully indexed and with an introduction newly written by the editors, Disability and the Media is an indispensable reference resource for researchers and students.

Social media is popularly seen as an important media for people with disability in terms of communication, exchange and activism. These sites potentially increase both employment and leisure opportunities for one of the most traditionally isolated groups in society. However, the offline inaccessible environment has, to a certain degree, been replicated online and particularly in social networking sites. Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of our lives yet the impact on people with disabilities has gone largely unscrutinised. Similarly, while social media and disability are often both observed through a focus on the Western, developed and English-speaking world, different global perspectives are often overlooked. This collection explores the opportunities and challenges social media represents for the social inclusion of people with disabilities from a variety of different global perspectives that include Africa, Arabia and Asia along with European, American and Australasian perspectives and experiences.