Critical Disability Studies Caucus: Sustaining Disability Studies in Times of Crisis

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Professional Development Format

Abstract

Despite the growth of disability certificates and programs in U.S. higher education, many U.S. colleges and universities have little institutional support for students and scholars taking up disability as a critical mode of inquiry. This roundtable brings together educators from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to ask how the field of disability studies has the potential to enhance traditional academic paradigms in institutions with varying levels of infrastructure and support.

As an interdisciplinary field with ties to a multitude of social justice movements, scholars in disability studies often work across more traditional disciplines to center disability histories, experiences, and interventions as valuable sources of knowledge. Yet, scholar activists embedded in crip sensibilities often do the bulk of the labor advocating for accessibility in zones of academic precarity. How can educators build support for graduate students and contingent faculty who do disability studies work from within traditional departments and/or interdisciplinary programs? What is the role of disability scholarship in challenging critiques of power structures in interdisciplinary fields, and how can we expand recognition for broad accessibility on our home campuses while confronting ableism in academia? This panel considers the vulnerability associated with doing disability studies work in inhospitable locations in addition to considering how critical disability models have the potential to crip traditional academic paradigms and generate more inclusive educational spaces.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• Jessica Cowing, College of William and Mary

Panelists

• Tanja Aho, American University

• Mimi Khúc, The Asian American Literary Review

• Jina Kim, Smith College

• Carol J Moeller, Moravian College

• Samantha D Schalk, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Jess Waggoner, University of Houston