Signs of Disability: Faculty, Accommodations and Access at Work | Stephanie Kerschbaum, PhD

While accommodation procedures for students are by now generally recognized and recognizable (although there is certainly still tremendous work to do on this front), the question of faculty accommodations is uncharted terrain on many college and university campuses. Beginning by articulating the concept of “signs of disability”—a means of making disability available for perception using a variety of embodied, environmental, and discursive practices—this talk moves through some of the experiences and encounters that disabled faculty have shared in research interviews, published accounts, and surveys. What such accounts reveal is that the emergence of disability and concomitant development of access and accommodation practices is part of a dynamic interrelationship between institutional cultures, environments for disability, and various ways that disability is available for noticing (or not-noticing) within faculty bodies and practices. The talk will conclude with some next-steps and questions for those interested and invested in creating more broadly inclusive academic environments for all members of the campus community, including faculty.

Stephanie Kerschbaum is an associate professor of English at the University of Delaware and a 2019-2020 NCID scholar-in-residence. Her work focuses on understanding how the ways people interact can help higher education institutions address issues of diversity and difference. Dr. Kerschbaum's first book, Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference, was awarded the 2015 Advancement of Knowledge Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Co-sponsored by the National Center for Institutional Diversity and the University of Michigan Department of Psychology.

The NCID Research and Scholarship Seminar Series features scholars who advance our understanding of historical and contemporary social issues related to identity, difference, culture, representation, power, oppression, and inequality. The series also highlights how research and scholarship can address current and contemporary social issues.

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