Prize honors daughter's love of disability studies

This year the Jessie Alpaugh Senior Prize in Disability Studies will be given for the first time to two senior students in the disability studies minor. The prize, two awards of $600 each, is named for Jessie Alpaugh, a young woman who was instrumental in starting the momentum that led to the establishment of the minor here at UCLA three years ago.

 

Jessie’s mother Lucy Blackmar, assistant vice provost for undergraduate education initiatives, helped to organize the prize, which is meant to honor not only her daughter, but also the interdisciplinary field of disability studies that Jessie came to love.

 

“Jessie had a point of view to bring to it because she was disabled, but it wasn’t about just studying disabled people,” said Blackmar, who has been at UCLA since 1983. “It was a lens for looking at humanity. It was just a saving grace for her; it was a light bulb.”

 

Jessie enjoyed fine health until she was 16 years old, when she was afflicted with brainstem encephalitis while on vacation in Montana. By the time she was airlifted back to UCLA Medical Center, she was paralyzed from her eyelids down. After nine painstaking months of recovery, rehab and surgeries to treat an additional medical condition that promoted the growth of multiple tumors, Jessie was left with visual, aural and vocal impairments.   

 

Despite all this, she graduated from high school and enrolled at UC Berkeley as a Chancellor’s Scholar. Although she entered as an art history major, she met Dr. Susan Schweik, an English professor who Blackmar felt became “a kind of mentor” to Jessie. Schweik brought Jessie into a group of faculty and students who were just beginning to explore the interdisciplinary field of disability studies.

 

A relatively new field, said Helen Deutsch, English professor and chair of the disability studies minor here at UCLA, disability studies “provides new ways of thinking about the body, society, and culture; its goal is not an answer to the question of disability but rather a critical framework that questions and connects established disciplines, including the sciences, the arts, and the humanities.

 

Jessie focused on the diversity of the field when she came to UCLA in the summer of 2002 to work with the late Jayne Spencer on a special independent study project. Spencer, who at the time was a lecturer in history with a Ph.D. in Latin American studies, was herself multiply disabled and in a wheelchair, having survived a car accident. Spencer had been working for years to get a disability studies minor established on campus, and Jessie’s project focused on compiling a list of all classes at UC Berkeley, UCLA and other universities across the country that focused on some aspect of disability and could be considered part of this field.

 

Although Jessie died later that fall at the age of 23 and Spencer died in early 2004, their hard work helped begin the campuswide effort to establish UCLA’s disability studies minor. Blackmar and Judith Smith, the vice provost for undergraduate education initiatives, hosted a lunch for faculty and administrators interested in taking part in the minor. It was after this event that Helen Deutsch stepped forward as a potential chair — a step that Blackmar called “essential” for the formation of the minor.

 

Finally in 2007, the disability studies minor was announced with classes in more than 20 departments and faculty from majors as diverse as community health sciences and Asian American studies. It continues to grow and expand into more fields of study, from north to south campus. The interdisciplinary nature of disability studies may be due not just to its presence in many academic fields, but because, as Blackmar explained, at some point in time everybody is affected by disability — either their own or that of a loved one.

 

Today, one of the most popular classes for undergraduates pursuing the minor is “Choreographing Disability,” a dance class taught by Professor Victoria Marks in world arts and cultures. An entirely different field of study is represented by a new class being created for this spring quarter by Ted Benjamin, professor of social welfare at the School of Public Affairs, called “The Emergence of Disability Policy and Politics in Contemporary America.”

 

As part of the disability studies minor, undergraduates are expected to complete a final capstone project that applies what they have studied to real-world problems or scenarios. These capstone projects inspired the creation of the Jessie Alpaugh Senior Prize in Disability Studies.

 

Blackmar said she hopes that the prize awards will grow. However, more than the money, she said she hopes the experience and encouragement will be truly valuable to the winners. “It might be just a little spark that will say, ‘Hey, you’re on the right track. Maybe you should go further with this.’

 

What the prize means to Blackmar is clear. “We’re really excited and grateful to our family and friends; people do keep giving, and that to us is a little flicker of light that reminds us of Jessie,” she said.

 

 For more information on UCLA’s disability studies minor, visit this website. Those interested in learning more about  Victoria Marks’ work can attend a special presentation of “Choreographing Disability” on Wednesday, Feb. 17 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. in Glorya Kaufman Hall 200.