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A Qualitative Study of Disabled Performance Art in Occupational Identity Formation and Empowerment
Get PDFBackground: Disabled performance artists use their occupation of performance art to challenge the attitudes of their audience toward disability, leading to a greater sense of empowerment and a strong identity as disabled people.
Method: This project used a narrative approach to qualitative inquiry to explore how engagement in performance art influences occupational identity and empowers disabled artists. Personal connections and snowball sampling resulted in six self-identified disabled performance artists participating in 60- to 90-min interviews. A thematic analysis resulted in three overarching themes.
Results: (a) Belonging to a community of disability activists promotes feelings of empowerment for disabled performance artists, (b) the invisible is made visible through their craft; performance art is a means to express the inside out, and (c) understanding and manipulating the physical and social space is integral to the sense of belonging and transformative process in disabled performance art.
Conclusion: Disabled performers engage in a performative discourse with the audience. The act of becoming a visible, active change agent creates a transformative process for the artist and audience. The role of performer and societal change agent becomes an important aspect of their occupational identity
Becoming a Skater: A Mixed Methods Study Exploring Supports and Barriers to Participation in Adaptive Skateboarding
Get PDFBackground: The occupation of adaptive skateboarding expands concepts of skateboarding through modifications that support performance for individuals with disabilities. There is a gap in the literature representing the experience of individuals with disabilities who desire to participate in adaptive skateboarding. The intent of the research study was to provide a foundational understanding of the occupation of adaptive skateboarding by exploring the question: What are the supports and barriers to participation in adaptive skateboarding?
Methods:This mixed-methods study was comprised of a 14-question virtual survey, a semi-structured interview, and an optional video submission.
Results: A total of 41 participants participated in the study. Identified participation supports included the opportunity for self-expression, community formation, skill development, and the meaning of risk. Identified participation barriers included cost barriers, environmental barriers, and navigating societal inequalities.
Conclusion: The identified findings inform roles of advocacy, program development, and demand for future research to expand representation of the occupation of adaptive skateboarding
Occupational Therapy Students’ Perceptions of Using ChatGPT for an Academic Course Assignment
Get PDFChat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT), a natural language based artificial intelligence (AI), has been either welcomed or maligned by academia. This project aimed to: (a) provide a structured opportunity for students to use ChatGPT and critique its responses and (b) investigate student perceptions before and after using ChatGPT for a class assignment. Forty graduate occupational therapy students used ChatGPT to complete two written assignments. Pre- and post-ChatGPT assignment surveys completed by students were analyzed. After using ChatGPT to complete course assignments, students were significantly more likely to agree that: (a) ChatGPT is helpful for completing assignments, (b) ChatGPT provides accurate answers, and (c) ChatGPT provides unbiased answers. Several themes emerged from the qualitative data: (a) critiques of ChatGPT, (b) optimal use of ChatGPT, and (c) emotional responses to ChatGPT. Academic assignments requiring the use of AI may allow students to appraise critically and responsibly use these tools for their learning
Best Practices for Managing Cultural Taxation
Get PDFThe majority of faculty in higher education in the US identify racially as White. Cultural Taxation is a term from 1994 that refers to a common practice in which minoritized racial groups have more responsibilities expected from them than their White counterparts. Since occupational therapy (OT) education is a microcosm of higher education in the US, this affects Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) faculty in occupational therapy as well. Recent Supreme Court rulings allow some states like Florida and Texas to eliminate their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Departments in higher education institutions. With DEI efforts being cut or limited, the burden of cultural taxation is even more incumbent on faculty given that departmental DEI efforts are being cut or curtailed. It is imperative that BIPOC faculty receive some relief from the cultural tax burden. The following best practices for managing cultural taxation are the “3 R’s of Cultural Taxation Relief”: (a) Rebate, (b) Refund, and (c) Reward. OT faculty and students need creative strategies to promote DEI efforts to prevent stress, fatigue, and burnout. These brief best practices provide a start to ensure that faculty are supported
Being English(?) In Ireland: Women’s Seals and Identity in Late Medieval Ireland
No full textThe use of seals to authenticate documents became widespread in the English controlled areas of Ireland following the conquest of 1169-1171. Thousands of wax impressions from seal matrices survive throughout Europe. The situation in Ireland, however, is different. Many seals and the documents they confirm were destroyed with the Public Record Office in 1922 during the Irish Civil War. The comparative scarcity of seals in Ireland has created a scholarly vacuum regarding these valuable sources. As a case study, I examine three fourteenth-century seals containing hunting motifs belonging to lower class secular women from the Ormond Deeds, a collection of documents at the National Library of Ireland. The text and image of these seals conform to English models, pointing to a desire for these sigillants to promote an English identity rather than an Irish or Anglo-Irish one. The hunt was a beloved activity of the elite of society. The lower, non-noble classes proclaimed their status by grasping a piece of elite culture through the depictions of rabbit hunts and falconry on their seals. The multivalent images on these seals also provide commentaries on stereotypical gender norms and reference the English conquest of Ireland and the superiority of the English over the Irish
The Fortitude of Medieval Women
No full textThis issue honors Linda E. Mitchell, Emerita Martha Jane Phillips Starr / Missouri Distinguished Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Professor of History at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, a former President of the Society of Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Linda’s multiple publications on the social history of English noblewomen and widows demonstrates her excellent training as a scholar in the midst of American second-wave feminism. Her feminist activism within the field of medieval studies is manifest in her scholarship, teaching, service, and mentorship
The Anxious Image: Figuration and Falsification in Medieval Iberian Charters
No full textThis study focuses on the unusual phenomenon of illustrated charters in northern Iberia during the central Middle Ages. These parchments are highly exceptional in their incorporation of figures of donors and even narrative scenes depicting ritual acts of conveyance. The essay considers this imagery as an extension of the diplomatic authority invested in clerical scribes and the signa (graphic signatures) they inscribed on charters as signs of personal identity. Crucially, the illustrations in question almost never appear on original charters made at the time of a given act; they were instead added to documents that were either later copies, interpolated copies, or outright forgeries. These figurative elements seem to have emerged out of an anxiety regarding the absence of the charter’s ostensible author, whose effigy provides a feigned presence to “author-ize” the accompanying text
Interview with Jane Newton
No full textOral history interview with Jane Newton was conducted by Kadence Koops, Willa Prinsen, and Elizabeth Foster on March 28, 2025. Interviewee Jane Newton was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she went to Wyoming Park High School and Michigan State University for her master\u27s and bachelor\u27s degrees. Jane and her siblings (one brother, and one sister) were raised by a Korean mother and a Cambodian father who immigrated to the United States. Although she spoke English at home, she grew up as a part of the Korean Church. As time went on, when Jane was in middle school she began to feel like an outsider, people not only made fun of the food she typically ate at lunch but also her first name. It was not until she was older that she had the opportunity to learn about her family\u27s heritage. One Sunday she came in late to church, forcing her to sit in the front row. During the sermon, the guest pastor from Cambodia introduced a trip the church would take back to her dad\u27s hometown. Jane ended up taking the opportunity to go but did not realize the true impact of what her parents went through until she toured the genocide museum. After taking this trip she asked her parents about their experience of immigrating. She learned that her mom immigrated during high school to live with her sister, whereas her dad came to the US to train as a helicopter pilot. Although she suspects that none of her father\u27s family survived the genocide that happened during this time, causing many people to immigrate, most of her mother\u27s family is still alive and she lives near them. As Jane surrounds herself with a Korean family she continues to carry out her culture for her kids. As a mother, she took on the role of exposing her children to her generational heritage by involving them in different school-related and outside activities. She and her family continue to embrace her heritage by honoring their ancestors and celebrating typical Korean traditions/holidays such as Hanbok and Jesa. Jane mentioned that her experience growing up was different but she is glad that she made a connection with her culture. She hopes to gain more courage to share her experience and advise young students and other immigrants to seek and explore opportunities to make intentional connections with their own culture.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/our-stories-aapi/1015/thumbnail.jp
What’s in a Name? Orthographic Evidence, Iconographic Models, and Artistic Invention in Middle-Byzantine Mosaic Decoration
No full textThe inscriptions that customarily label images in Byzantine mosaic are a neglected source of information about the working methods of mosaicists in the Middle Byzantine period. Pronunciation shifts since the Classical period, when Greek orthography was standardized, meant that consistently correct spelling was difficult to achieve without an advanced education, despite widespread literacy at a more basic level of Greek. The spelling of the inscriptions is meticulously correct in certain high-status mosaic programs, here described as “zones of vigilance,” whereas in other programs the inscriptions are spelled phonetically according to the prevailing medieval pronunciations of Greek. The distribution of orthographic errors suggests that in programs largely free of errors, spelling was checked by some educated figure as the artists laid the mosaics rather than dictated in advance. Programs with a high number of phonetic spellings call into question the possibility, often proposed in older literature, that the mosaicists were working from model books, since in that case one would expect to find the correct spellings at hand for copying. While scrupulously correct orthography suggests careful oversight at monuments such as Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and Nea Moni on Chios, the irregularities of spelling in the inscriptions of other, equally sophisticated mosaic programs suggest that artists enjoyed a surprising degree of autonomy as they created these cycles of images. In other words, the presence of non-standard spellings in inscriptions prompts us to rethink assumptions about how tightly artists’ work was controlled by the Church and by their patrons