This online (Zoom) event aims to bring together UBC faculty, students, and staff engaged in disability research, education, and justice initiatives. The purpose is to showcase disability-related efforts underway at UBC, create an opportunity for networking and community-building, and lay the groundwork for a Centre for Disability Research, Education, and Activism. The event will include a keynote address by Dr. Michelle Owen. She will be speaking about her experiences as a Disability Studies scholar and as the coordinator leading the Disability Studies program at the University of Winnipeg. It will be followed by a panel discussion featuring three participants from UBC as well as a showcase of current disability advocacy initiatives.
ASL interpretation and CART (live captions) will be provided in this event.
This event is funded by UBC’s Equity & Inclusion Office and co-sponsored by Department of Asian Studies and Centre for Workplace Accessibility.
Schedule
11:00am-12:30pm (PT): Keynote “Imagining and Re-imagining Disability Studies in the 21st Century” by Dr. Michelle Owen
“In this presentation I will reflect on my experiences as a Disability Studies (DS) scholar and program coordinator in Canada. When I entered postsecondary education as an undergraduate in the 1980s, DS was unimaginable. The students and professors appeared to be predominantly non-disabled, as well as white, male, and middle-class. Women’s Studies (WS), as it was known then, was just getting started. As a feminist I have always been interested in embodiment, but my scholarship was not focused on disability until my own experience of disablement as a professor. (Or rather, the first experience I acknowledged as such.) Since then my research has been centred on disabled women using an intersectional lens. I have presented papers and written about topics including violence, housing, employment, families, and pedagogy. The process of imagining DS at the University of Winnipeg (UW), and then bringing the program to fruition, involved community activists and academics. UW has been enriched by the addition of DS, and DS research, and I believe it is vital for all universities to offer DS degrees. However, there are challenges, especially in a neoliberal context where the value of education is increasingly commodified and measured by its worth under capitalism. This symposium provides an exciting opportunity to (re)imagine DS in the 21st century.”
12:30pm-1:00pm (PT): Break
1:00pm-1:15pm (PT): Showcase
1:15-2:30 (PT): Panel “Disability Research, Education, and Activism at UBC”
Keynote speaker
Michelle Owen is a Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies, and Coordinator of Disability Studies, at the University of Winnipeg. From 2003-2004 she was Research Chair at the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies. Her research interests are disablement, chronic illness, gender, sexuality, violence, and theory. Some of the courses she teaches are Embodied Subjects, Theorizing Disability, and Sexualities, Disabilities, and Rights. Dr. Owen’s publications include three co-edited books, Not a New Problem: Violence in the Lives of Women with Disabilities (Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2018), Working Bodies: Chronic Illness in the Canadian Workplace (Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2014), and Dissonant Disabilities: Women with Chronic Illnesses Explore Their Lives (Women’s Press/Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2008).
Panelists
J Logan Smilges is an assistant professor of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia, where they write and teach in queer/trans disability studies, rhetorical studies, and the history of medicine. They are the author of Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) and Crip Negativity (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).
Michelle Stack, Ph.D., is the Academic Director of the UBC Learning Exchange, an inaugural Knowledge Exchange and Mobilization Scholar and an associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies. She is author of Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge (Open Access Book) and Coops and Campuses Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic: University rankings or co-operatives as a strategy for developing an equitable and resilient post-secondary education sector?
Georgia Yee (she/they) is a sixth-year undergraduate student studying Biology with a minor in Health and Society. Georgia is passionate about community organizing around climate justice, mental health, anti-racism, and accessibility, and currently serves as a Student Governor and Senator-at-Large at UBC.
About the UBC Transdisciplinary Symposium
This event builds on an earlier initiative led by Shota Iwasaki, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Corin Parsons, and Ayaka Yoshimizu, “Innovative and Inclusive Teaching of UBC Instructors with Disabilities: Compiling and Sharing Existing Knowledge and Best Practices.”
The project outcomes include:
Annotated Bibliography on Teaching and Learning with Disabilities and Illnesses in Higher Education
UBC’s Accessibility and Support for Disabled Instructors Survey 2021
Challenges and Best Practices of Disabled Instructors at UBC