Panel: Whose Space? Who Belongs?: Intersectional, Social Justice Approaches to Understanding Power, Place, Accountability, and Change
Title of Contribution: Queering and Cripping the Classroom - Student Visions for Social Justice Accessibility
Abstract: As a disabled activist-teacher, I am constantly struggling to find meaningful, critical ways for students to plan and/or engage in social justice praxis that is accessible. For the students at one large, public research institution in the mid-Atlantic and former capital of the Confederacy there are many barriers to participation in collective movements: they often work full-time or multiple part-time jobs to afford their classes and materials; many of them have families, both parents and children, that they care for and/or the events don’t provide childcare; they fear putting their bodies on the line as black, brown, indigenous, queer, trans, and disabled people; the events aren’t near or off public transportation or require lengthy walking and/or standing; no one thinks to list mobility aid or language access/accommodations; or they are neurodivergent in ways that make participation unlikely (crowds, noises, smells, lights, etc.). As Eli Clare writes (2015): “Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race… everything finally piling into a single human body. To write about any aspect of identity, any aspect of the body, means writing about this entire maze.”
Knowing this, I developed a course entitled “Resistant Bodies: Queer/Crip”, focusing on the use of queer and crip theories to highlight the interconnectedness of systems of domination and how they are implicated and informed by discourses of sexuality, disability, and the body. A key learning objective for this upper-level course was for students to develop and articulate their own visions for the future of improving social justice accessibility (broadly defined). They were asked to, initially, document places, spaces, interactions, or moments of inaccessibility that they encountered using a Photovoice technique. As the semester progressed, we used these photovoice entries to determine key policies, practices, and stakeholders to target for change. Students worked alone and in small teams to create artwork, poetry, research papers, policy drafts, performance pieces, experiential learning workshops, and guided dialogue sessions for a half day “Accessibility Symposium” at the end of the semester.
This presentation will discuss the logistics of planning the symposium--including describing student’s interactions with Photovoice, their conversations around what to showcase on the day of, and their decisions of which stakeholders to engage; the students’ visions for the future of improving accessibility at/in college spaces and how they see that as integrally linked to social justice praxis; and the students’ final reflections on their involvement in accessible collective action. This presentation will also show images from the symposium and include samples of student work, with consent.