Douglas Biklen 

Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education, Syracuse University

Douglas Biklen is Professor of Cultural Foundations of Education, and a member of the faculty in Disability Studies at Syracuse University. A senior faculty in the Center on Disability Studies, Law and Human Policy, his work has focused on inclusive schooling, the right for people with multiple disabilities to communicate, and representations of ability and disability. He has published many books and articles, including: Schooling without Labels; Contested Words, Contested Science: Unraveling the Facilitated Communication Controversy; and the forthcoming Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone (NYU Press). He is co-producer of the documentary Autism Is A World that will air on CNN Presents in the spring of 2005.

Constructing Competence: Autism, Voice and the "Disordered" Body

Biklen’s talk explores his experience in working on a highly controversial topic, facilitated communication, and how this work informs ideas about intellectual competence, voice, and performance. Drawing upon observations and interviews as well as recently collected autobiographical accounts and historical documents, he critiques conventional constructions of intellectual ability and presents an alternative disability studies framework for thinking about thinking.