Embedding Disability Studies Theory and Research in the Cleavages of College Coursework

• In Event: 52.025 - Bringing Disability Studies Into the University Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary and Intersectionalities Approach

Abstract

Abstract
More than any other point in the history of higher education, today is a time when disability is/should be front and center both in services provided in college campuses as well as in the courses taught across disciplines. However, the risk of succumbing to the seduction of disability tropes that have been perpetuated by disciplines that medicalize difference still runs high. Leonard Davis (1995), in Enforcing Normalcy, argues that disability is not established by the differences that constitute it, but by what society recognizes as normal. Anyone outside of what society views as average then becomes deviant compared to those that make up the imperative normative society. Historically, therefore, this system of forced heteronormativity produced deviant bodies and the evolution of ways of constructing and relating to defective bodies (Erevelles, 2000). Mutua, Siders and Bakken (2011) argue that deviancy, paradoxically constructed as visually conspicuous yet simultaneously invisible, assures the social-political erasure of disability and becomes a credible alibi for justifying segregation of particular bodies that were scripted as inferior. In Defectives in the Land, Douglas Baynton (2005) argues “Disability is conspicuously absent from all fields of histories” (p. 41).

My role in this project was to bring a cross-cultural lens in the exploration of creative ways of embedding a disability studies perspective and/or ways of using disability studies as a critical frame of reference in disciplinary studies drawn from a broadly conceived discursive community of colleagues in education, justice studies, African American Studies, Women’s Studies, etc. who were all committed to highlighting the intersectionality of disability and other identities of alterity such as race, class, gender, national origin, religion, etc. My role also included exploring ways of theorizing disability as a means of situating its intersectionality in research and praxis across various disciplines. Drawing from examples of my own courses where I have embedded disability studies, we scoured course syllabi brought in by workshop participants for ways to introduce and embed the lens of intersectionality which we believed could complement a disability studies ethos alongside the development of a disability studies certificate. Finally, drawing examples from my own work, I ended with a presentation to demonstrate ways in which I apply postcolonial/decolonizing methodologies in exploring the intersectionality of disability and coloniality and how I utilize semiotics to understand the cultural construction of disability.

Author

• Kagendo Mutua, The University of Alabama