EVENTS OF INTEREST – PROFESSOR JAY DOLMAGE VISITING CAMPUS

The Composition & Rhetoric Colloquium, Disability Studies Initiative, and McBurney Disability Resource Center are pleased to co-sponsor a number of events next week with Professor Jay Dolmage, associate professor of English at the University of Waterloo and author of Disability Rhetoric; Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education; and Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability. 

We welcome you to participate in the events detailed below. Since food will be provided at some events, we ask that you indicate your plans to attend using the linked Google form so that we can get rough numbers. We also invite you to request accommodations for any of these events using the same form. CART will be provided at the Thursday afternoon talk.

Graduate Student Roundtable: Collaborative & Community-Based Research
Thursday, October 4
11:45 – 12:45
6172 Helen C. White Hall

Professor Dolmage will share details of his current research, a collaborative project about collective memory (see “Where We Are: Disability and Accessibility: Moving Beyond Disability 2.0 in Composition Studies” from Composition Studies 42.2 (2014)). Roundtable participants will engage in conversation about conducting research and writing that is community-based and collaborative.

Lunch will be provided by the Composition & Rhetoric Colloquium. Please let us know that you plan to attend and request accommodations in the linked Google form.

Talk by Professor Dolmage: Academic Ableism
Thursday, October 4
3:30-5:00
6191 Helen C. White Hall

For too long, 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 the history of eugenics, to current campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, this talk will argue that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all. 

CART services will be available. Please request additional accommodations in the linked Google form.

Workshop: Against Academic Ableism
Friday, October 5
10:00-11:30
6191 Helen C. White Hall

In this workshop, we will collaborate to address the ableist attitudes, policies, and practices that are built into higher education. We will also interrogate the minimal and temporary means we have been given to address inequities, and the cost such an approach has for disabled students and faculty. Finally, we will explore our own ableist biases, apologies and defenses in an effort to build tools for anti-ableist education.

Refreshments will be provided by the McBurney Disability Resource Center.  Please let us know that you plan to attend and request accommodations in the linked Google form.


We look forward to welcoming Professor Dolmage to campus next week!