Elizabeth DePoy

THE STUDENT BODY: THE INTERSECTION OF SPATIAL DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, AND CULTURAL POLICY IN UNIVERSITY COMMUNITIES

Purpose – This chapter discusses a study in which we examined campus architecture, spatial design, aesthetics, and cultural policy with regard to the manner in which attributes in these visual and textual entities shape the full range of diversity of the student body or the individuals and collective group who study within the university. n nMethodology – This chapter presents the qualitative element of a larger multi-method inquiry. The data for this study were generated from a sample composed of eight universities in four states in the United States and of cultural policy documents from multiple universities in addition to the eight specific universities that were visited on-site. n nFindings – Twelve themes emerged from data derived from campus visits to eight universities representing diverse geographies and institutional structures and from analysis of the cultural policies of 30 institutions of higher education. Taxonomic analysis (analysis of the organization of themes and their relationships to one another) revealed important directional associations among the themes yielding rich findings for future theory development and testing. n nImplications – The findings yielded important understandings about the influence of cultural policy as reflected in the campus community, on inclusion, exclusion, and diversity. Of particular note were the unexpected thematic findings regarding the political, proprietary preferences of “disabled” groups related to space ownership and the future implications of occupying specialized designated architectures. We conclude with conceptual and methodological directions for expanding this research agenda internationally and for informing change in cultural policy and architectures on campus communities.

Child Mental Health: A Discourse Community

Over the past three decades, discursive analytic epistemologies have become central tools within the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. Particularly within the United States and Western European academic discourses, theorising disability as linguistic artefact has been potent in wrestling atypical embodiment away from its medical deficit prison and repositioning it as a socially and culturally constructed phenomenon. While vigorous and compelling, we assert that delimiting communication to discourse, conversation, and humans interacting with humans is incomplete. Rather, we propose meaning making and its productions in cultural expectations of development, normalcy, health, and illness as complex interactive discourse communities in which language, object, materiality, and interpretation dance in synergy. Given the local nature of community and its intrinsic discourse, this work, while emergent from US and UK scholarship, can be extrapolated and applied to analysis of discourse communities across the globe.