My Tumblr Can Be Your Life

Everyone, I have started the process of developing a permanent, personal website.  I hope to launch this new site by the summer of 2018.

Please direct your inquiries there.

I was flattered to be invited to stand for election to the MLA’s Professional Issues Delegation.

Now, I am here asking for your vote!

For your reference, I have pasted in here the personal statement that I submitted to the MLA.

If you are an MLA member, please vote in all of the election categories.

And best of luck to all of the nominees!

For sixteen years, I have worked at the intersections of classroom instruction, education administration, and student support. I began these efforts as a public high school teacher, a position in which I primarily taught disabled and immigrant student populations. While pursuing my doctorate, I worked as an adjunct professor at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College. During my time there, I grappled with questions about the connections between the humanities and the economic and political realities of American life. Many of my students were not United States citizens, and they had diverse professional histories—aspiring auto mechanics, enlisted Army soldiers, and working parents. 

Lest there be any confusion, I just want to make a public announcement that On the DL: Athletes, Athletics, and Disability has been delayed indefinitely. Unfortunately, I was unable to attract enough paper proposals to run a review process, or even to constitute a volume if I were to accept all of the submissions I did receive without review.

Though this is a fairly common occurrence, it is one that saddens me, because I was hoping that this project would have gotten off of the ground.

I have extended the proposal submission deadline for the edited collection On the DL: Athletes, Athletics, and Disability one final time.  The final updated deadline is December 2, 2016.

I am honored to be teaching a new class at Washington, DC’s Politics and Prose.  Titled, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Wild Man,” this course will look at three works of twentieth-century American masculine travel writing.  It will be fun, and I hope to have you in the class.

I have extended the proposal submission deadline for the edited collection On the DL: Athletes, Athletics, and Disability.  The updated deadline is September 30, 2016.

Popular rhetoric about athletics consistently emphasizes corporeal mastery and bodily perfection.  Always exhibiting physical and mental toughness, athletes train ceaselessly to reach the pinnacle of sporting accomplishment: taking things to the next level.  In fact, there is a good argument to be made that athletic excellence requires superhuman skill, for it is only when athletes devote 110% of themselves to their sports that victory can be achieved.

Yet, despite their apparent otherworldly physical strength and endurance, athletes constantly inhabit positions of disability.  Whether experiencing performance interruptions due to “overuse” injuries or bearing the brunt of permanently disabling violence—concussions, spinal cord damage, any number of musculoskeletal traumas—athletes are defined by disability just as much as they are defined against it.

On the DL: Athletes, Athletics, and Disability is the title of a proposed essay collection that will read competitive athletics through a disability studies lens.  Given the myriad definitions of “sport” across the globe, On the DL is interested in compiling a wide variety of theoretically-engaged analyses of sporting culture.  In addition to traditional academic approaches to this topic, On the DL invites submissions that take the form of memoir/autobiography, photojournalism, or any other innovative non-traditional format.  Again, however, all submissions must articulate rigorous, clearly defined theoretical angles on their subjects.  

Furthermore, On the DL is explicitly seeking discussions of disability and mourning.  In an attempt to push disability studies to address questions about unwanted disability—say, when a fulfilling athletic career ends due to a sudden disabling condition—this collection is particularly enthusiastic about essays which contend, in any number of ways, that athletes need space to lament bodily dysfunction.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

concussions/head trauma/traumatic brain injuries

disability benefits for professional athletes

injury—permanent and temporary

youth sports and concerns about childhood injuries

sport as sanctioned violence—hockey, American football, wrestling, boxing

athletic prosthetics

The Special Olympics

Oscar Pistorius

Caster Semenya

gender trouble: the shrinking performance gap between male and female athletes

The Paralympic Games

“Race for the Cure” and other charity athletic events

racially-charged rhetoric about disability/injury and professional athletes (“loafing” e.g. Derrick Rose, Grant Hill, Pablo Sandoval, etc.)

body size and athletics: “fat” baseball pitchers and football linemen  

eating disorders and athletes

the dieting industry

the fitness industry

Fitbit and other fitness “training” devices

the rise of marathon running

Ultrarunning

Ironman Triathlons, Spartan races, Tough Mudder competitions

The Boston Marathon bombing

wheelchair athletics

access to physical therapy

Is physical therapy snake oil?

Western vs. Eastern approaches to health and injury treatment

participation in organized sports as part of a “normal” adolescence

college athletics

college athletics and unions

colleges profiting from—and capitalizing on—young athletes

organized sports as part of the education industry

“flopping”/performance of injury—soccer, basketball, etc.

anabolic steroids and human growth hormones as injury treatment/rehabilitation

doping, drugging, and “cheating”

CrossFit

Western appropriations of yoga

the rise of “wellness” and “mindfulness”

nutrition and athletics—“superfoods,” supplements, and “anti-inflammatory” diets

employer incentives/benefits for employees who remain “fit”

Please send 750-1000 word proposals to Dr. Joseph P. Fisher at [email protected].  Also, please include a one-page CV with your proposal.  

Wilson Komen of Washington, DC’s Coach Kiprunning has just announced that his Sports Club is accepting new members.  

The Sports Club page on the Coach Kiprunning blog contains a link to an official flyer, which details the procedure for becoming a member, while also promising to offer ongoing updates about the club’s activities.

We’re honored that Sunaura Taylor offered her painting Arctic Wheelchair (2013) for our Composing Disability publicity materials.

I’ve tried my fingers at blogging a handful of times over the years.  First, there was the You Made Me Theorize project that I initiated with my American literature students at The George Washington University.  Then, I wrote for PopMatters for several years.  (BTW, PM, I still owe you entries on the Ride, Slowdive, and Faith No More reunions, as well as one on Pinkshinyultrablast, which is easily the best indie band going right now.)  And, of course, there is this very intermittently updated Tubmlr. blog thingy.

Now, I am honored to say, Wilson Komen of Coach Kiprunning has asked me to blog for him.  Wilson has been my running coach for the past five years, and he has entirely reworked my understanding of running as a sport and as a lifestyle.  I have experienced much success as an adult long distance runner, and I owe that success to his excellent tutelage.  I am honored to be a part of this extension of his coaching business.

For now, we are simply calling the blog Coach Kiprunning [dot] Blogspot [dot] com.  As the project develops, it might assume a more official name.  Or, it might not.  We’ll see!

Please read along with us as we work to develop what we hope will be a competitive running club.  If you’re interested in that, drop us a line.  We’ll be happy to chat.

It has been a shamefully long time since I have updated this Tumblr. feed.  As a result--and more shamefully--I neglected to publicize the publicity that the excellent Jonathan Hsy (@JonathanHsy) offered Composing Disability in the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies.  

Dr. Hsy wrote an excellent, comprehensive piece on the event for the journal’s “Comment from the Field” section.  

The entry is available at the following citation (institutional access required):