Browsing by Subject "Disability"
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Item A capabilities approach to understanding health disparities(2018-08) Thurman, Whitney Annetta; Harrison, Tracie C., 1968-; Garcia, Alexandra; Sage, William M; Stuifbergen, Alexa K; Umberson, Debra; Walker, VeronicaHealth disparities are pervasive in the U.S., and three of the greatest risk factors for poor health outcomes are race, rural residence, and disability. Individuals in these groups frequently experience poor health outcomes and social disadvantages. Such disadvantages contradict ethical principles such as respect for equal moral worth of all and social values such as non-discrimination. The purpose of this dissertation was to explore race, disability, rural culture, and disparities experienced by these groups using a social justice lens. Specifically, this dissertation relies upon a social constructionist perspective situated within Sen’s capabilities approach to examine the cultural and social systems that influence the meaning and experience of health, well-being, and disability. The dissertation is comprised of three separate manuscripts; each presents findings from a distinct investigation. The first is an issue brief that answers the research question: how does the capabilities approach compare with the WHO’s International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) in terms of these models’ ability to accommodate the diverse experiences and needs of people with disabilities? The second presents results from a critical analysis of literature related to racial disparities in healthcare utilization and outcomes among veterans in the Veterans’ Healthcare Administration (VHA). This investigation answers the research question: what are the structural determinants that influence disparities in health between African-American veterans and their non-Hispanic white counterparts with osteoarthritis? The third presents findings from a grounded theory study investigating well-being among working-age adults with disabilities living in rural counties in Texas. This investigation of 12 rural-dwelling adults with disabilities answers the research questions: how do working-age adults with disabilities who live in rural Texas define and pursue well-being, and how does the rural environment influence both their definition of and their ability to pursue well-being? The findings from this dissertation underscore the critical notion that individuals are inextricable from their social worlds. It is argued that without a holistic assessment of an individual’s sociocultural and economic circumstances, healthcare providers may inadvertently perpetuate disparities by providing culturally inappropriate care and/or prescribing physically or economically unattainable interventions. Implications for nursing practice, policy, and the delivery of long-term services and supports in rural areas are discussed.Item Administrator perception of threat from students with disabilities and disciplinary decisions(2013-05) Williams, Jacob Levi; Pazey, Barbara Lynn, 1951-; Yates, James R.The disproportionate exposure to exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities is an acknowledged phenomenon. However, a theoretical understanding for this phenomenon is unknown. Recent claims have been made that the disproportionate use of exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities results from a long-standing historical pattern of discrimination. The use of exclusionary discipline for students with disabilities results in the denial of opportunities and services at a more frequent rate than their peers without disabilities. This denial would indicate the possibility of prejudice, a construct understood to arise from the existence of a perception of threat by the ingroup in an intergroup relationship. The purpose of this study was to (a) determine if school administrators hold perceptions of threat from students with disabilities and (b) if a relationship exists between identified threats and disciplinary decisions. A survey measured threat perception, administrators' attitude toward students with disabilities, and administrators' disciplinary action preference in instances involving students with disabilities. It was hypothesized: H1. Perceived realistic threats will have a direct effect on administrator disciplinary decisions. H2. Perceived threats (both realistic and symbolic) will have a direct effect on administrator attitudes towards students with disabilities. H3. Perceived threats (both realistic and symbolic) will have an indirect effect through attitude on administrator disciplinary decisions. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed an acceptable model fit of the four latent variables of realistic and symbolic threat, educational administrator attitude toward students with disabilities, and educational administrator discipline decisions for students with disabilities. An acceptable fit was found for the originally hypothesized structural model, and no improved alternative models were identified. Realistic threat was found to have a significant relationship to educational administrators' disciplinary decisions for students with disabilities. No significant paths were identified for symbolic threat or attitude.Item Ahab's leg : a disability history of Yankee whaling(2023-12) Shook, Coyote Ulysses; Beasley, B. Alex; Mickenberg, Julia; Kafer , Alison; Davis, JanetThis dissertation, presented in graphic novel format, examines the history of Nantucket whaling through a disability lens. It characterizes whaling, once one of the United States’ most lucrative industries, as the nation’s first foray into unsustainable energy extraction. Beginning with shore whaling, this work studies the ways in which industrial accidents on board incredibly dangerous whaleships make the industry unique when it came to “maiming” whalers. It next examines scientific understandings of whaling and disabled people during the height of Yankee whaling, observing scientific classifications of both animals and disabled people in popular culture and entertainment (such as public dissections and freak shows). Next, the dissertation analyzes how the early Republic used whaling not simply as an industry, but as a pretext to assert American geopolitical influence and naval expansion by examining case studies of Yankee whaling’s impact on 19th century Hawaii and Alaska. Penultimately, the dissertation examines the decline of Yankee whaling, the rise of the late 19th century, international industrial whaling, the rise of the Save the Whales movement and the implications of that movement for disability studies. To conclude, the dissertation proposes new ways of thinking when it comes to environmental justice for disabled people and whales in the present day.Item All-around(2016-08) Martinez, Tony Joe, III; Howard, Donald Wayne; Garrison, Andrew; Berg, Charles; Lews, DeborahThis report summarizes the development, production, and post-production process of the short documentary ALL-AROUND. Shot in 2014 and finished in 2016, the film was produced as my Graduate Thesis Film in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts in Film Production degree.Item American deaf women historiography : the most silent minority(2011-12) Nathanson, Deborah Anne 1974-; Jones, Jacqueline, 1948-The development and current state of the historical perspective of American Deaf women is outlined in the report. Initially this paper reviews the historical study of people with disabilities and for the American Deaf. This paper concludes with a review of the small but significant selections of historical scholarship related directly to American Deaf women along with recommendations to preserve the rich and colorful Deaf-oriented heritage; especially of the women.Item An experimental assessment of visual attention and sign language comprehension in ADHD and neurotypical second language learners of American Sign Language(2023-04-21) Joyce, Taylor Renee; Quinto-Pozos, DavidSign language requires the perceiver’s visual attention, whether accessed in the foveal or peripheral vision; managing visual attention in real-world conversation is a skill second language (L2) sign learners may need practice to master. This task may be a challenge for an individuals with differences in visual attentional processing, such as those with ADHD, but little research on atypical signed L2 learners exists to date. This report introduces a novel online experiment to investigate visuo-attentional differences in hearing, L2 signers of American Sign Language while undergoing signed language comprehension. Participants attempt to rapidly perceive both linguistic and non-linguistic visual stimuli in their immediate and periphery vision while attending to a visual anchor. A small analysis of L2 signers finds a robust effect of the attentional manipulation (distance from stimulus to anchor), but conflicting evidence for sensitivity to linguistic factors such as sign complexity, sign frequency, and the difference between signed language and non-linguistic gestural stimuli. Importantly, this task is demonstrated to be successful at probing visuo-attentional mechanisms in a sign language processing context, and will be suitable for a test population between neurotypical and ADHD L2 ASL learners. Further, the results suggest that even somewhat experienced L2 signers may be relying on general perceptual, rather than specific linguistic, processes for sign and sign-like stimulus processing, which serves important implications for L2 signed language learners of all neurotypes.Item The blind leading the blind : frame alignment and membership meetness(2014-08) Jeang, Janice Pam; Young, Michael P.Membership in a social movement organization (SMO) and membership discourse provide space for participants to name and reconstitute their experiences, bodies, and self-images through an embodiment of organizational frames. This reconstitution is especially affirmed in the interaction of marginalized groups, such as individuals with disabilities, whom make up disability focused organizations and social movements. As a group with multiple intersectionalities, as well as an even smaller subsection of various marginalized populations, individuals with blindness face unique barriers when consideration of participants' identities and self-understandings is central in understanding entry as well as ongoing participation in organizations. Disability based organizations, represented by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), must carefully frame the organizational membership of certain individuals whom could threaten cohesion through differing understanding of identities, not revolving around disability. This thesis is an examination of the organizational discourse and the "membership meetness" of participating persons in the NFB. Goffman’s notion of “breaking frame” theoretically informs this analysis of organizational discourse produced by the 'collective blind' in one of the oldest American disability social movement organizations to date. The NFB’s attempt to mitigate the “broken frame” introduced by the incorporation of members whom are not seemingly suitable and do not self identify as blind, into an overwhelmingly blindness based enterprise is to strategically mend existing frames to reinterpret extant social norms. The purpose of this thesis is to use a grounded theory approach, to tease out how membership is framed. In the NFB, frame alignment is accomplished by: framing blindness through allies transformed as friends, framing blindness as a characteristic, framing blindness as respectability, and framing blindness through rhetorical humor in narrative. The above four frames to disability based social movements offers researchers the opportunity to understand how groups attempt to integrate into their activities members who lack “membership meetness” while simultaneously garnering support and advancing interests within the larger movement.Item Casting disability in Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) : a look at inclusive casting through the eyes of institutions, performers, and young audiences(2010-05) McRae, Talleri Anne; Zeder, Suzan; Alrutz, Megan; De La Garza, DeniseWhen directors in professional Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) practice inclusive casting, or, in other words, cast an actor with a disability in a role that is not written with a disability, several provocative questions emerge: What are the social implications of inclusive casting? How might stories on stage change due to inclusive casting? What does inclusive casting mean for professional TYA companies and directors? How might performers with disabilities examine their personal and professional relationship to disability when participating in inclusive casting? How might a young audience’s perspective change when inclusive casting is implemented? This thesis examines these questions through interviews with directors, performers, and young audience members.Item Cordial treatments : the medical plot in novels by Jane Austen and the Brontës(2016-05) Turner, Joanna Leigh; Bertelsen, Lance; Baker, Samuel, 1968-; MacDuffie, Allen; Minich, Julie A; MacKay, CarolThe word “cordial” in this dissertation’s title represents its concerns with both emotional and biomedical matters in nineteenth-century England. The dissertation focuses on what it calls the “medical plot”: whereas critics such as Tony Tanner and Nancy Armstrong have argued that marriage and its literary representation structure the English novel of manners, this dissertation argues that medicine and medical discourse likewise shaped the ways authors represented social, personal, and literary “conditions.” It thus evaluates the complementary influence of marriage and medical plots in novels by Jane Austen and by Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë, historicizing medical treatment to show that concerns about health and illness permeated social, legal, and literary discourse and that these concerns were manifested by Austen and the Brontës when they fashioned novels as a figurative mode of “treatment.” Chapter One surveys the apothecary figures in Austen’s works, showing that her novels are as much novels of medicine as they are novels of manners. Chapter Two examines Austen’s “cordial” treatment of disability in her fiction in relation to an account of her family’s disabled members and a historical survey of disabled veterans of the Napoleonic Wars. Chapter Three shows how marriage and medicine work in tandem to influence narrative at mid-century, by tracing socio-medical attitudes toward cordials as they inform the prescient treatment of alcohol addiction in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848). An Epilogue then gestures toward future critical work on the Brontës and cordial treatments by considering “influence” in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), and sickness more broadly in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). Illuminated by the study of the medical plot, these novels of cordiality and courtship prove to also be novels of cordials and cures. Early nineteenth-century experimental cordials reflect scientific and personal uncertainty about medical treatment, and the medical plot’s emotional and medical cordials offer alternatives to critical demands that novels prescribe “cures” for the social ills they portray. Austen and the Brontës’ show that while novelistic “cures” are elusive, literary cordials offer palliative comfort to treat medical and social illness.Item Critical approaches to access : rethinking first and last mile access to opportunities for disabled people(2023-08-01) Levine, Kaylyn; Karner, Alex; Sciara, Gian-Claudia; Solis, Miriam; Winges-Yanez, NickThe disability community has been largely underrepresented in the transportation planning process, resulting in accessibility challenges and limitations in access and mobility. Disability rates in the U.S. have increased from 12.5% in 2010 to 13.4% in 2020 and is expected to continue to trend upwards. My dissertation contributes to understanding how disabled people experience the first and last mile segments of public transit trips to access the opportunities they need. To analyze this phenomenon, I frame first and last mile planning for disabled people within the theoretical framework of mobility justice, providing new connections between transportation systems, decisions, and experiences. Scholars can be most effective in advancing justice by shifting power away from planners and agency leaders to capitalize on citizen-led planning goals. This work examines if greater involvement and recognition in the engagement, data analysis, and planning process for the disability community, using a critical lens, can transportation planning for disabled people. My work centers disabled travelers by integrating their experiences throughout the planning process, rather than making assumptions based on insufficient data about pedestrian and transit environments. Using a mixed-methods research design, I compare missing sidewalk infrastructure, public agency planning for transit riders with disabilities, and the travel experiences of disabled transit riders along the first and last mile. I find contextual and intersectional burdens along the first and last mile trip segments for disabled people who use public transit and discuss how spatial and socioeconomic inequities impact these burdens. My dissertation makes three contributions to transportation planning scholarship. I situate first and last mile trips within the complex, socio-political realm of the existing built environment and social systems that link the travel behavior of disabled people with intersectionality, social exclusion, and equitable active transportation. My pedestrian network analysis of missing sidewalk infrastructure uses a novel approach to suggest that first and last mile conditions are needed in measures of access to opportunity. Lastly, I propose that intersectionality, and the complex factors that contribute to a traveler’s identity, need to be prioritized in the transportation planning process.Item Digital news and people with disabilities : where are we headed?(2012-12) Goebel, Christina Cowart; Alves, Rosental C.; Todd, RussellMany people with disabilities have been traditionally excluded from receiving or interpreting the news. U.S. law has changed requirements for Internet content and will lead to drastic changes in how news is conveyed online. Mainstream media is making headway toward communicating to the culture and abilities of people with disabilities, but serious errors still exist, particularly in digital news formats that exclude many people with disabilities from accessing news. While people with different disabilities are producing primarily niche news content, mainstream media is still the main source of authoritative news regarding people with disabilities. Hiring news staff with disabilities will help mainstream media develop an understanding of the physical, cultural and intellectual requirements of people with a variety of abilities.Item Disability and the gothic in southern women's literature(2022-01-28) Piwarski, Rachel (Rachel Ann), 1991-; Minich, Julie Avril, 1977-; Barrish, Phillip; Kafer, Alison; Cox, James H; Buenger, WalterDisability and the Gothic in Southern Women’s Writing connects intersectional disability studies to American literature. The gothic works of mid-twentieth century writers Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers, ZZ Packer uncover how female writers strikingly subvert social expectations of normativity and propriety to resist narratives that favor white homogeneity by using a grotesque lens. Conventionally, the grotesque is often associated with disabled people, but I explore how the authors use this literary trope indiscriminately with all characters to reveal the difficulty of living with physical or mental differences in the respective regions they focus on in the South: rural communities, industrial towns, and the metropolis. I argue that disability remains at the heart of this literature because it uncovers cultural attitudes that embolden those in power to marginalize people outside of a straight, white, male, and able-bodied position in largely rural settings. To enact their subversion, these female writers use the gothic literary mode to communicate stories that reflect horror and history. This dissertation explores disability as it relates to mother-daughter relationships and institutionalization, the misfit other and harmful spectating in coming-of-age stories, and power dynamics in various social settings. Instead of casting disabled figures as the primary targets of this grotesque mode, I look to grotesque depictions of other abled-bodied characters within stories that center disability, where authors notably apply the grotesque to non-disabled characters. Using this tactic allows writers to illustrate that genuinely horrific traits can be found within the face of the oppressor.Item Embracing inclusivity in fitness facilities and health clubs(2018-06-25) Grana, Courtney Rachelle; Jensen, Jody L.; Buchanan, PamelaThe Embracing Inclusivity Workshop will take the reader through a thorough and complete guide on how to design fitness facilities as accessible and inviting spaces for those with disabilities, as well as how to train fitness instructors on developing fitness programs, with awareness for specific modifications and assistive devices. All individuals have a need and a desire to stay healthy and fit, and people will generally choose to go to public fitness facilities, including health clubs and other privately owned membership gyms to exercise. Therefore, these facilities must be equipped with effective access routes, equipment, and programs for people with impairments or disabilities. Several materials have been created addressing access issues, little has been done, however, to ensure that the fitness trainers, health and wellness coaches, and fitness facilities are equipped with the knowledge and practice to train people those with impairments or disabilities. The unique needs and risks of those with disabilities, paired with the unaccommodating characteristics of most fitness environments, make it extremely challenging for people with special needs to stay physically fit and healthy. This workshop will address, first, the program outline and goals with specific attention to the obesity rate, health condition, and physical activity participation percentages in those with a disability as well as the importance of inclusive and accessible fitness centers. Next the Embracing Inclusivity Workshop will address the current guidelines for training people with disabilities, with specific attention to: auditory disabilities, visual disabilities, physical disabilities, autism spectrum, intellectual disabilities, mental health, and chronic disease/ illness. Finally, the workshop will conclude with the barriers fitness facilities should address regarding architecture, attitude, communication, and programming. In this section, the reader will learn detail requirements of their facility in order to make their site accessible including exercise equipment, marketing materials, assistive devices, removing disability stigma, and smart and effective programming.Item Embracing the (un) desired : disability, environment, and citizenship in Laura Aguilar’s photographs(2021-05-11) Salcido, Karina Alejandra; Flaherty, George F., 1978-This thesis focuses on Chicana photographer Laura Aguilar and the role disability had on her artistic practice. My analysis of Aguilar’s work focuses on several images from Aguilar’s Nature Self-Portrait (1996-2007) and Grounded (1996-2007) series, and three photographs titled Three Eagles Flying (1993), Access + Opportunity= Success (1993), and Will Work For #4 (1993). I approach these images through a disability studies framework of the body-mind to emphasize the influence of Aguilar’s non-normative identity on her photography. Throughout my analysis, I find that her devalued position as a disabled, poor, queer Chicana is a source of knowledge for her visualizations of exclusion and discrimination of minorities. I expand on conversations surrounding her nude self-portraits in nature by discussing the ontological relationship between Aguilar and the American Southwest deserts and the care work she established. My thesis is based on disability and is structured by the diverse manifestations of Aguilar’s exploration of her non-normative body-mindItem Fracturas : growing our understanding of intergenerational trauma, disability, Latinx girls in the school-prison nexus and community healing(2022-05-09) Garcia, Magdalena Isabel; Kafer, Alison; MInich, Juliefracturas is a hybrid work inspired by the format and freedom of zines interwoven with personal anecdotes, art, theory and research. fracturas draws on the placement of Latinx girls navigating the school-prison nexus with regards to disability, intergenerational trauma, community and healing. Examining carefully the historical relationships Latinx and Black women and girls have formed to take care of themselves, to survive trauma and create lives for themselves.Item Infinite majesty : disabled and athletic métis in David Foster Wallace’s tennis writing(2018-05-03) Rabe, Michelle Elizabeth; Houser, HeatherAs John Jeremiah Sullivan remarks in his introduction to String Theory, a collection of David Foster Wallace’s essays on tennis, tennis “may be [Wallace’s] most consistent theme at the surface level.” As once an elite junior professional himself, Wallace reflects on and writes from his own involvement in the sport, with the conditioning, strategy, and body-mind training that goes into it. In other essays of String Theory, Wallace reaches beyond his personal playing experience, observes professional tennis players with their incredible grace, and creates his own tennis playing students in Infinite Jest. Throughout these fictional and nonfictional accounts, he conceptualizes what such eminent athleticism entails. This paper will show that celebrated athleticism in Wallace’s work exhibits an embodimental métis, or an acute, crafty body-mind knowledge of its movement through space. Beyond only characterizing athletic movement, however, this paper argues that the same concept of métis extends to people with disabilities, including characters with disabilities in Infinite Jest. The same hyperawareness of corporeality, versatile methods of adjusting to oppositional contexts, and extraordinary complexity are shared by both groups. Using rhetorical scholarship on métis and disability theories of embodiment and social representation, this paper will draw parallels between the moving body-minds of athletic and disabled bodies and trace the implications of this analogy for Wallace’s work and disability studies.Item Intersections of disability, gender, and sexuality in higher education : exploring students’ social identities and campus experiences(2015-05) Miller, Ryan Andrew; Reddick, Richard, 1972-; Cvetkovich, Ann; Holme, Jennifer; Reagins-Lilly, Soncia; Sáenz, Victor; Vaccaro, AnnemarieDiversity of social identities among college students has received increasing attention in higher education research, with a particular focus on singular dimensions of identity. However, scholars have often neglected the intersectional experiences of multiple social identities. While research has begun to address the experiences of students with disabilities and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students as distinct populations, few researchers have addressed the identities and experiences of LGBTQ students with disabilities in higher education. Thus, this study begins to address a need for empirical research on the social identities and higher education experiences of this population. Two primary research questions guided this study: (1) How do LGBTQ students with disabilities conceptualize their multiple, intersecting social identities, specifically the intersections of disability, gender, and sexuality? (2) How do LGBTQ students with disabilities perceive the influence of context at a predominantly White, research-intensive university in the southern United States in shaping their identity development journeys? This study utilized a qualitative methodology situated within critical and postmodern epistemologies. Specifically, concepts from queer theory, disability studies, and queer disability theory/crip theory guided this research. Situational analysis, a postmodern extension of grounded theory that calls for the making of three types of situational maps, guided the study’s design and analysis. Purposive sampling techniques were used to identify: (1) the institution of higher education under study, and (2) 25 undergraduate and graduate students who self-identify as LGBTQ and with a disability to participate in one to two semi-structured interviews. Students constructed positive, salient queer identities and utilized a variety of contextual labels for gender and sexuality. Most participants understood disability primarily as a medical phenomenon, but some participants also began to attach relational and political meanings to disability. Though participants acknowledged the presence of multiple identities, they viewed connections among their identities in distinctive ways: intersectional, interactive, overlapping, parallel, and/or oppositional. Students described complex processes for disclosing identities, forming community, and navigating normative temporal and spatial expectations of the university. Finally, students spoke of their journeys finding campus resources, encountering able-bodied/heteronormative assumptions in the classroom, and joining with others to create social change.Item Learning how to care : an ethics that includes the cognitively disabled(2019-09-23) Christoff, Caroline Elizabeth; Higgins, Kathleen Marie; Strawson, Galen; Woodruff, Paul; Winslade, WilliamMy dissertation addresses the question of how we ought to care for and engage with people with cognitive disabilities. The project has two main goals: the first is to develop a more robust account of care ethics, and the second is to use this newly developed account to theorize about current conceptions of how we ought to treat individuals with cognitive disabilities. First, I address the theoretical problem of how to make ‘care’ a robust enough concept to govern our ethical treatment of others. I address the primary problem care ethicists have traditionally had with conceiving of care as a virtue: virtues are egoistically focused on eudaimonia or self-happiness. I suggest this concern can be avoided if the aim of virtues was to develop flourishing relationships rather than individual character. With a conception of care established, I proceed to consider whether we have developed the right moral and epistemic virtues to properly care for people with cognitive disabilities. I argue that individuals with cognitive disabilities, regardless of the severity of their disability, face a variety of epistemic injustices that negatively impacts the care they receive and the relationships that they are able to form. Then, I consider whether individuals with cognitive disabilities are able to care for others as others can care for them. While caring for others is obviously not beyond the capability of those with disabilities that are traditionally classified as ‘mild’ or ‘moderate,’ I suggest that even those with what we would consider ‘severe’ impairments are able to care. Finally, I consider one specific practical implication of a system of ethics that appropriately recognizes the epistemic and moral contributions of individuals with cognitive disabilities. I consider how college instructors can use their position of authority to better care for students with learning disabilities in their classrooms.Item Nativity and age of migration in relation to morbidity, disability and active life expectancy among older Mexican Americans(2015-12) Garcia, Marc Anthony; Angel, Ronald; Angel, Jacqueline L; Hayward, Mark D; Hummer, Robert A; Powers, Daniel A; Rodriguez, NestorThe U.S. Mexican-origin population has experienced rapid growth over the past several decades, with aging Mexican Americans composing a significant part of this increase. Despite these growing numbers there has been relatively little research that explores how nativity and for immigrants, age of migration, affect health outcomes of Mexican Americans in later life. The objective of this dissertation is to examine and document differentials in morbidity, Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs), and Performance-Oriented Mobility Assessment (POMA) limitations across eight groups by gender, nativity and age of migration among Mexican-origin elderly individuals residing in the southwestern United States. This broad examination takes into account the demographic heterogeneity of the U.S. Mexican-origin population and is especially timely given the rapid population aging that U.S. Latino and immigration subpopulations are experiencing. I argue that the life experiences of the foreign-born in the U.S. are likely to be shaped by the age and the period at which they immigrated to the United States. Results show that there are important differences by nativity and age of migration in the prevalence, ALE, and functional limitation trajectories of foreign-born Mexican elders. Female migrants are at a significant disadvantage in terms of IADL disability relative to U.S.-born women, particularly early and late life migrants. Conversely, mid and late life male migrants exhibit a health advantage in TLE and ADL disability compared to their U.S.-born counterparts. Furthermore, results indicate that mid and late life migrant males have lower functional disability at age 65, however have a steeper increase in POMA limitation over time relative to U.S.-born and early life migrants. These findings illustrate foreign-born Mexican elders are not a homogeneous group. While the majority of individuals in this cohort report a disability, there are large variations by nativity and for immigrants by age at migration. This issue merits special attention in the development of community-based long-term care programs to appropriately target the specific needs of different sub-groups of older individuals of Mexican-origin who are entering into their last decades of life.Item Natural, infinite, artistic : demythologizing athletic superability in contemporary American literature(2022-04-06) Rabe, Michelle Elizabeth; Houser, Heather; Minich, Julie Avril, 1977-; Cox, James; McClearen, JenniferNatural, Infinite, Artistic centers a disability studies approach to demythologize contemporary American sports narratives about athletic superability and analyze how particular elite skills are falsely and strategically distanced from disability in line with what disability theorist Tobin Siebers calls the “ideology of ability.” The ideology of ability flattens the complex, contextual, and fluctuating nature of ability into a hierarchy that casts some bodies as superior and “superabled,” like those of elite, nondisabled athletes, in contrast to bodies rendered “disabled” by their conditions and settings. Natural, Infinite, Artistic identifies three myths of athletic superability—that it is natural, infinite, and artistic—and locates the myths in representative texts to analyze how each marginalizes and dehumanizes disability in support of this ideology. In examining the myths, each chapter considers the racialized, gendered, and ableist dimensions of which particular athletes’ abilities have been mythologized. In addition, each chapter identifies a concept—“freakery,” metis, and the cyborg—and shows that, while each concept could unite disability and superability to destabilize the ideology of ability, it is actually used to sever the two and celebrate superability. Demythologizing narratives that glorify superabled athletes upends the way ability is mythologized in particular bodies and undermines ideas about what makes ability (and whose ability) supposedly desirable and superior. While Natural, Infinite, Artistic centers narratives of athletic superability, it does so in service of what disability activist Mia Mingus calls “disability justice.” Disability justice work undermines the ideological system that privileges able-bodiedness and stigmatizes disability while respecting the differences between them. Natural, Infinite, Artistic works toward this conception of disability justice by complicating and combating sports narratives in which the ideology of ability is not only operative, but heightened, with depictions of superabled white, male athletes as unequivocally superlative. Narratives about superability are places where ideas of ability as normal, ideal, and impressive are generated and sustained against ideas of disability as something that is limiting, lamentable, and needing to be overcome. In order to destigmatize disability and upend the ideology of ability, Natural, Infinite, Artistic subverts the belief that possessing natural, infinite, and artistic superabilities is possible and preferable