“Joy is Revolutionary”: A Call to Action for Disability History (Poster 4)

• In Event: Critical Special Education: Reexamination, Reimagination, and Rethinking of Research, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to explore how archives from Disability history might become culturally sustaining practice, particularly for Disabled youth. While such inquiries are also important for non-Disabled youth, we explore how to change the social and historical narratives and communities that schools make available to Disabled youth. We question what could be possible through (re)imagination: What could be the impact for Disabled students in social studies classrooms when access to culturally sustaining materials? How could access to these sources create communities of belonging and center experiences of joy?
In this chapter, we are interested in Disability as a social identity and how this constructs the material realities of youth labeled as and/or identifying as Disabled. Our theoretical frameworks are comprised of: critical disability theory (Connor et al., 2016), queer theory (Halberstam, 2018) and theories of Disabled Futurism (Gonzalez, 2020; Mühlemann et al., 2023). We also utilize critical special education theory (Erevelles et al., 2006; Kearl, 2019) and critical historical inquiry (Blevins et al., 2020).

Our data is archival material from Camp Jened housed in the New York City Civil Rights History Project. Camp Jened is believed to be a think tank of the modern disability rights movement. This summer camp was the first for Disabled children staffed by Disabled adults and was where teenaged Judy Heumann first began her activism. Without the work of Disabled activists from Camp Jened, the field of special education would be fundamentally different.
We are using critical discourse and inter-textual analysis to analyze a sample from the archives. We are looking to see how participants in Camp Jened present themselves, their Disabilities, and their social positions in these materials.

Our analysis entangles textual with reflection. Author 1 is a Disabled researcher/special education teacher and social studies teacher. Growing up, they learned about disability history through the history of institutionalization but not through crip culture (Kafer, 2021; Wong, 2021). Having these archival materials shared with them by Disabled elders opened up new connections and relationships with Disabled communities and activism. We entangle Author 1’s affective experiences with our archival analysis because they help us imagine how these archives might become culturally sustaining pedagogy for Disabled youth.

We find that this archive includes powerful stories of what we will call Disabled Joy. We use Joy to convey demonstrations of authenticity and agency reflected in these materials. Across these archives that share Disability activism, we find there is a production of Disability communities and movements wherein Disabled people embrace themselves and refute institutionalization and adaption toward “normal”. Our analysis focused on four elements in these stories: revolution, connecting with others, seeing themselves, seeing community.
This poster is a call to action for educators to reimagine the field of special education and to push the boundaries of what’s possible for the youth in their classrooms. This chapter calls for educators and for students to look towards the past as a roadmap to themselves and their own liberation.

Authors

• Jasper W. Golden, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Sandra Schmidt, Teachers College, Columbia University