Center for Disability Studies

Susan Cahn is a Professor of History who received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1990. She specializes in U.S. women’s history and the history of sexuality, and also teaches courses in the history of mental illness, southern history, and history of adolescence. Her interest and current research in Disability Studies concerns the history of mental illness, chronic illness, and their gendered dimensions. She has published two essays on these topics: “Of Silver and Serotonin: Thinking Through Depression, Inheritance, and Illness Narratives,” (Review Essay) American Quarterly 59 (December 2007): 1225-1236; and “Come Out, Come Out, Whatever You’ve Got, or Still Crazy After All Those Years,” Feminist Studies 29 (Spring 2003): 1-12. Her major publications in women’s history include three books: Sexual Reckonings: Southern Girls in a Troubling Age (Harvard University Press, 2007); Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader, co-edited with Jean O’Reilly (Boston: Northeastern University Press / Univ. Press of New England, 2007); Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport (NY: Free Press, 1994; Harvard University Press, 1995).

Dr. Lee Dryden is Director of the UB Social Science Interdisciplinary Degree Programs. http://www.ssc.buffalo.edu The largest SSI concentration, Health and Human Services (500 students) develops social science based perspectives on the professions, agencies and recipients of services in the community health and human services system. This includes instruction and internship placements related directly or indirectly to all disabilities. People Inc. and Social Science Interdisciplinary have more than 25 years of cooperation over inclusion of instruction about disabilities in the HHS curriculum. Dr. Dryden teaches "Social and Ethical Values in Medicine" in this curriculum and is interested in the ways that attitudes toward normality and disability affect the treatment of persons in the health care system, especially in the area of reproductive screening and non-treatment decisions about disabled infants.

The current Director of the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo is Professor David A. Gerber, University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of History. Professor Gerber, who has been at UB since 1971, specializes in American social history, and has been interested throughout his career in issues of personal and social identity among a wide variety of Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including European immigrants, African Americans, and American Catholics as well as disabled American veterans of World War Two. Among his publications are Disabled Veterans in History (2000), for which he served as editor, and numerous essays in academic journals on disabled veterans.

Ann McElroy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo. Among her fields of interest and teaching are medical anthropology, disability, and North American ethnology. She has done extensive research on the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. She has written a number of recent papers in the field of medical anthropology, and is the coauthor, with Patricia K. Townsend of MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, now in its fifth edition.

Edward Steinfeld, Arch.D., is a registered architect and gerontologist with special interests in universal design, accessibility and design for the lifespan. He is a Professor of Architecture and Director of the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center). Dr. Steinfeld is Co-Director of two federally funded Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center grants on Universal Design and the Built Environment and Accessible Public Transportation. He is one of the authors of the Principles of Universal Design and has an extensive record of research, design, education and publishing. His most recent publication is Inclusive Housing: A Pattern Book, published by W.W. Norton in Spring of 2010.

John Stone has been at the University of Buffalo since 1991. Prior to that he held faculty positions in Brazil for 17 years. At the University at Buffalo, he initially worked in the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Aging and in the Center for Assistive Technology. Since 1999, he has directed the federally funded Center for Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange (CIRRIE). Dr. Stone is interested in international rehabilitation and the relationship between culture and disability. He is also interested in the process of dissemination and utilization of information, as well as the translation of information from research to practice.

Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information & Exchange (CIRRIE)

The mission of CIRRIE is to facilitate the sharing of information and expertise between rehabilitation researchers in the U.S. and those in other countries. It addresses the needs of researchers, practitioners and consumers for research-based information from international sources. Its programs include an online Database of International Rehabilitation Research; development of an online multi-lingual international encyclopedia of rehabilitation in English, Spanish, and French in collaboration with the Quebec Institute for Physical Rehabilitation; sponsoring an international conference and workshops on the WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Additionally, CIRRIE develops new pre-service initiatives in the area of cultural competence for disability service providers, including: Developing four curriculum guides for university programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and rehabilitation counseling; and conducting an international conference on Providing Culturally Competent Disability Services. CIRRIE-2 supports collaborative activities between the U.S. and other countries through a travel grant program.

Dr. Vasquez began his career in 1973 with the Arizona Training Program at Tucson, an institution serving people with developmental disabilities and currently serves as Executive Vice President for People Inc., a Western New York not-for-profit agency dedicated to providing quality services to persons with developmental disabilities. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Center for Disability Studies and People Inc.’s Museum of disABILITY History.

Vasquez received his Bachelor of Science Degree as well as his Master of Business Administration from the University of Phoenix in Arizona. He received his Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Dr. Vasquez teaches a course for the Social Sciences Interdisciplinary Degree Program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, which focuses on Issues in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.

Cynthia Wu is an assistant professor of American Studies. She specializes in Asian American and comparative ethnic studies with secondary interests in disability studies and queer theory. Her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in a/b, American Literature, MELUS, Meridians, and the Southern Literary Journal. Her book manuscript, "Conjoining the Republic: The Siamese Twins in American Literature and Culture," examines how Chang and Eng Bunker--also known as the Original Siamese Twins--operate as figurative devices for nation building and citizenship from the nineteenth century to the present.