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CULTURAL STUDIES AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE FACULTY


 Pamela Block

 Professor and Director, Disability Studies Concentration, Ph.D. Program in Health
and Rehabilitation Sciences
Director, Graduate Certificate in Disability Studies
Interim Chair, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, European Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Ph.D. – Duke University 
pam
Pamela.Block@StonyBrook.edu  |  631-632-7456  |  1055 Humanities
    • Disability experience on individual, organizational and community levels, focusing on socio-environmental barriers, empowerment/capacity-building, and health promotion.
    • Disability studies, autism studies, assistive technology, foundations of OT, qualitative research design, human subjects research ethics.
Dr. Block is Professor and Director of the Concentration in Disability Studies for the Ph.D. Program in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, Interim Chair of the Cultural Studies and Comparative Studies Department, as well as Hispanic Languages and Literatures and European Languages Literatures and Cultures,  and Director of the Graduate Certificate in Disability Studies.  She was a former President of the Society for Disability Studies (2009-2010), and a Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology. She is also affiliated with the Stony Brook University Departments of Occupational Therapy, Cultural Analysis and Theory, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics.
 
Dr. Block received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in 1997. Her dissertation was entitled "Biology, Culture and Cognitive Disability: Twentieth Century Professional Discourse in Brazil and the United States." She researches disability experience on individual, organizational and community levels, focusing on socio-environmental barriers, empowerment/capacity-building, and health promotion. Her qualitative research combines historical analyses with community-based ethnographic and participatory approaches. Dr. Block continues to study multiple marginalization and the intersections of gender, race, poverty, and disability in Brazil and the United States. She has taught in the areas of disability studies, autism studies, assistive technology, foundations of OT, qualitative research design, human subjects research ethics, and grant writing. Most recently, Dr. Block has been involved in supporting disability social entrepreneurship through organizations such as EmpowerSCI – a nonprofit providing independent living skills and secondary rehabilitation to individuals with recent spinal cord injury, and VENTure – a policy and technology think tank on issues of concern to people who use ventilators. Dr. Block organized the NIH-funded strand of the Society for Disability Studies 2013 and 2014 meetings entitled "Translational Research in Disability Studies and the Health Sciences," and received NIH Funding for the 2015 "Converging Sciences Summit: Community Engagement and Population Health" at Stony Brook University.
 
Links to more of her work:
    occupyingdisability