Spring 2024. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

Spring 2024. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

Description

January 31, February 21, and March 21, 1:00-2:00 pm Liz Norell In this spring reading group, we invite UM campus members to explore the book Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education by Jay Dolmage, a leading scholar in disability studies. Over the course of three sessions, we’ll discuss the ideas from the book in the context of our campus. We invite faculty, staff, and students to join us. (NOTE: The book is available online as an open resource through Project Muse.) Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.

Publication Date

1-31-2024

Relational Format

book

Spring 2024. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

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