Ep 46: Disability Studies
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Today’s topic is disability studies featuring a discussion with two scholars, Dr. Sami Schalk and Dr. Subini Annamma. Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field that looks at disability from multiple perspectives and approaches. Sami is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction and Subini is the author of The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus. Both Subini and Sami will talk about their experiences writing their books, the future of disability studies, and what excites them about teaching and generating knowledge as academics.
Transcript
Related Links
2018-19 Ford Foundation Fellowship awarded to special education faculty member, April 12, 2018, KU News Service
Book explores how minority girls with disabilities are criminalized, form ‘ecology of resistance’ in juvenile jails, February 20, 2018, KU News Service
Book explores how disability, race intersect in pushing kids to prison, May 10, 2016, KU News Service
Disability Studies Initiative, Emory University
Imagine Otherwise: Sami Schalk on Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, July 4, 2018, Ideas on Fire podcast
Professor’s book explores intersectionality of ableism, race through fantasy, October 5, 2018, Jain, Anushka, Daily Bruin
Society for Disability Studies
Space the Nation: The future is female — and black, and disabled, January 22, 2019, Ana Marie Cox, SYFY Wire.
Subini Annamma on “Excavating Possibilities: Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) in Education,” February 22, 2019, Haas Institute For a Fair and Inclusive Society, University of California, Berkeley.
About

Subini Ancy Annamma, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas. Her research and pedagogy focus on increasing access to equitable education for historically marginalized students and communities, particularly students with disabilities. Specifically, she critically examines the social construction of race and ability; how the two are interdependent, how they intersect with other identity markers, and how their mutually constitutive nature impacts education experiences. She centers this research in urban education and juvenile incarceration settings and focuses on how student voice can contribute to dismantling systemic inequities and identifying exemplary educational practices.
Dr. Annamma is the first author on Dis/ability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability, which was published in Race, Ethnicity and Education in 2013 and is included in the 2nd edition of Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education. Since then she has published multiple articles, book chapters, and is currently a co-editor of two books. She served as an Associate Editor of International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education and is currently on the editorial board of Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners. Dr. Annamma is a past winner of the American Education Research Association (AERA) Dissertation Minority Fellowship in Education Research Award and is currently Co-Program Chair for the 2016 annual conference of the Critical Race Studies Association in Education. She has served as an invited speaker on topics ranging from the School-to-Prison Pipeline and Mass Criminalization, Restorative and Transformative Justice, Disability Critical Race Theory, and Critical Perspectives in Special Education Policy and Practice.
Twitter: @DrSubini

Dr. Sami Schalk is an Assistant Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her BA in English (Creative Writing) and Women’s Studies from Miami University in 2008, her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from University of Notre Dame in 2010, and her PhD in Gender Studies from Indiana University in 2014.
Dr. Schalk’s interdisciplinary research focuses broadly on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture, especially African American literature, speculative fiction, and feminist literature. She has published on literature, film, and material culture in a variety of peer-reviewed humanities journals.
Dr. Schalk’s first book Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (Duke University Press 2018) argues that black women writers of speculative fiction reimagine the possibilities and limits of bodyminds, changing the way we read and interpret categories like (dis)ability, race, gender and sexuality within the context of these non-realist texts. Dr. Schalk has begun a second book project on disability politics in contemporary African American art and activism, including the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter movement. She also writes for mainstream outlets, namely Our Lives Magazine, Madison’s local LBGTQ magazine.
On a personal level, Dr. Schalk identifies as a fat, femme, black, queer, cisgender, nondisabled, middle-class, polyamorous, body-positive, sex-positive, intersectional feminist woman. Dr. Schalk uses she/her pronouns. You can follow her activities on Twitter and Facebook.
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Credits
Sarika D. Mehta, Audio Producer
Alice Wong, Writer, Producer, Interviewer
Cheryl Green, Text Transcript
Lateef McLeod, Introduction
Mike Mort, Artwork
Theme Music (used with permission of artist)
Song: “Dance Off”
Artist: Wheelchair Sports Camp
Music
“La verdadera impaciencia (B-side)” by L.D.I. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License)
“The Stream” by The Pangolins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License)
“Frisco Nights” by Loco Lobo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License)
Sounds
“VOCODER countdown” by Jack_Master. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License.
“8 Bit Beeping Computer Sounds” by sheepfilms. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License.
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