IN PROGRESS PUBLICATIONS
Challenging “The Never-Ending Funeral”: Reconceptualizing Dementia through a Disability Studies Lens
Gibbons, H. M. (In Review)
Dementia, as an age-related impairment and one of the most feared conditions in modern society, highlights the myriad ways disability and age intersect. Gerontologists and other scholars in aging studies have largely led the way in studying dementia, and have been among the leaders who have called for society to change the way individuals view and act toward people with dementia, but few have considered how a disability studies lens might accomplish this goal. Similarly, disability studies has been essentially uninvolved in this scholarship, despite the fact that dementia is one of the leading causes of impairment in older adults. As a result, dementia provides an interesting case study to explore how disability studies and gerontology might inform one another. In this paper, I examine how reinterpreting dementia through a disability studies lens might open up new possibilities for the way people with dementia are conceptualized and treated. I first define dementia and discuss current discourse on dementia. Then, I examine dementia using four theories and frameworks in disability studies: the social model of disability, the political/relational model of disability, crip time, and rhetoricty. This type of theoretical integration benefits the fields of gerontology/aging studies and disability studies, and more importantly, hopefully will ultimately enhance the lives of people who experience dementia and other impairments, whether recently acquired or lifelong, in later life.
Mad Women: A Bipolar Memoir
Gibbons, H. M., & O'Leary, M. E. (In Progress)
In these brief but powerful memoirs, we discuss personal stories related to our navigation of our identities as women with psychiatric disabilities, and how this identity intersects with our other identities. We consider the times in our lives in which we were forced into consent and compliance, and explore how, as we progress through our life courses, we have sought to reject and resist normative expectations through repeated and ongoing moments and acts of disclosure and authentic living. We reflect on our experiences with identity and disclosure in regards to three contexts: socialization, disclosure in our past context of the medical industrial complex, and disclosure in our current context of the disability community and university.