Through CUNY's Disability Studies Master's Degree curriculum, I have thoroughly appreciated learning the history, philosophy, accounts, and applications to reinforce my belief that humans, as different learners, have different needs. Teachers taught through
personal experiences with Cerebral Palsy, Dysarthria, Dyslexia, spinal cord injuries, deinstitutionalization, climbing the White House steps;
as CUNY Disability Studies graduates;
in professions from social worker, lawyer, teacher, speaker, advocate,
researcher, writer, health care director, movie producer; and
with cultural perspectives from California, Kansas, New Jersey, New York, New Zealand, Tennessee;
the collective concentration was What is it that makes one human?

     The history of disability is a narrative - a story of humanity's challenges and creative thinking.
The true seed of any narrative is asking what if.
                      Below is a story, with a disability lens, of a creative thinker asking, "What if".

     As disability advocates continue pursuing the goal of progressing independent life, society has added to its narration with complex judicial situations and challenging scientific ideas. The past century has been an era of strategic initiatives to liberate humans and educate society through advocacy actions, congressional and ordinary voices judicially uniting, and sharing experiences to help society understand that disability occurs at some point in everyone's life - impairment is a part of life.

              Living life, in all its versions, makes one human.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) influenced
                        my e-portfolio's design. Why Van Gogh?
          During his lifetime, Van Gogh enjoyed little prestige,
selling only one of his @900 paintings,
                    The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888, (on the right).
Initially trained to be a Dutch Reformed Church pastor, like his father, passion led Van Gogh to painting at age 27 and to death via a self-inflicted gunshot at age 37.

Born with a brain lesion, Van Gogh, much like 19th century writer Edgar Allan Poe, drank absinthe, which caused epilepsy. A doctor treated Vincent's epilepsy with the drug, Digitalis, causing him to see in yellow or yellow spots. Thujone, the toxin in absinthe, causes one to see objects in yellow and aggravated Van Gogh's epilepsy and mania.
Cafe Terrace at Night (Arles, 1888) is an example Van Gogh's love for yellow.

Vincent was prone to periods of mania and depression, however, he did not cut off his ear but only a small portion of the ear lobe. Van Gogh wrote over 800 letters, mostly to his brother, Theo. Some believe that hypergraphia, the need to write continuously and often connected with mania and epilepsy, affected Van Gogh.

At age 36, Van Gogh began the Starry Night series (Paris over the Rhine, 1888) while living in the Saint Paul asylum in Saint Rémy, France.
Halos are present in Van Gogh's Starry Night series.
Paint contained lead in the 19th century; swelling of the retinas, which can cause one to see light in circles like halos around objects, is a symptom of lead poisoning.

Vincent had two brothers, 1) an older brother, whose name was also Vincent Van Gogh, who died at birth, and
2) Theo, who died six months after Vincent and                  is buried next to him in Auvers, France.
  Fun fact: On the back of Self-Portrait with Straw Hat (1887) is The Potato Peeler (1885).
     Short of funds, Vincent often painted on
        both sides of the canvas.
            Both paintings on the single canvas
                      are on display at
                 NYC's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

           After Van Gogh's death,
              Theo's wife collected and saved
                            Vincent's 800 letters and 900 paintings
          dedicating her life to getting Vincent the recognition he deserved.
Why Van Gogh? The history of disability is a narrative -
            a story of humanity's challenges and creative thinking.
                         The true seed of any narrative is asking what if.

             Van Gogh was a multidimensional human,
          a representative of the social construct of disability,
                   a recipient of the medical model of impairment,
                               and the living example of invisible impairment. 

                         Van Gogh is the picture of Disability Studies.
             If we only look at his art, then we miss seeing the human.

Van Gogh painted Starry Night (1889),
       and its variations,
from his bedroom window in
      the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum.
These interactive YouTubes depict
            a visual possibility of
        Van Gogh's thought process,
     what his mind saw while painting.

                         Click play.

                     Stare at the
              black / white spiral
                  for 30 seconds,
         then look at the

                  Starry Night painting.