Defying Discourses of Inaccessibility: Disabled Palestinian Narratives in Disability Studies in Education

• In Event: Investigating Intersectional Oppressions and Pathways of Resistance

Abstract

This paper extends the conversation that began in a special issue of Disability Studies Quarterly (2007) on “The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine,” by expanding understandings of disability experiences in Palestine. Three US researchers challenged a prevailing narrative that Palestinian stories of disability are largely inaccessible to Western scholarship, and found ways to learn from students, artists, teachers and scholars who are disabled and/or doing disability work in Palestine. We analyzed multiple accounts of disability in Palestine, and found that disabled experiences intersect with debilitation under military occupation. Attention to global realities in DSE can support educators to understand the convergences and divergences across geographies and to imagine new possibilities in their own contexts.

Authors

• Nancy Stern, City College of New York - CUNY
  Presenting Author

• Jan W. Valle, City College of New York - CUNY
  Presenting Author

• Lilly Padia, Erikson Institute
  Presenting Author