CCCC 2005: ReviewReview: D.03 Critically Engaging Others: Pedagogical Encounters with Disability These four presentations engaged questions of how we teach critical thinking about disability in our writing curricula and classrooms, and the panel employed multimodal presentation strategies designed to stimulate – and be accessible to – all members of the audience. In “Taking it Personally: Some Thoughts on Critical Pedagogy, Disability, and Identity,” Margaret Price queried the role of personal identity in critical explorations of disability. Price explored the phenomenon she calls “personal analogy,” where students compare their own experience of discrimination based on gender, race and/or class to the experience of having a disability. While such comparisons can sometimes be trivializing, Price provided examples from her students’ Web-based discussion, noting that as different opinions were articulated in the online environment, students created opportunities to mentor each other by exploring and mitigating resistance using the insight of personal experience. Price’s exploration of the relationship of race and disability is particularly timely – not only because of CCCC’s conference theme, but because the field of disability studies has been particularly grappling with issues of race. Next, Pushpa Parekh explored the intersections of disability and racial and gendered identities in her talk entitled: “Voices of Difference: Migration Narratives and Discourses of Disability.” Parekh discussed an upper-level English course where she taught women’s migration narratives, explaining that her goal was to explore “the unrepresentable spaces of disabled subjectivity.” She particularly focused on how disability intersects with other identities through a discussion of Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints, and how she used a multimodal pedagogy to encourage participation. To begin her interactive presentation entitled “Between Empathy and Resistance: Critical Thinking and Writing About Disability,” Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson explored two common responses to disability studies curricula – what she referred to as the “two perilous shoals” of empathy/pity and resistance. She explained that the empathetic approach articulates the goal of a disability studies class as helping the non-disabled identify with the disabled, while a resistant approach labels disability studies as the instructor’s agenda. Lewiecki-Wilson posed a third approach, where disability studies encourages critical thinking, and she questioned whether a single rubric could measure the various subcategories and epistemologies of critical thinking in writing. To this end, the audience read an informal reflection from a student in a disability studies writing course and discussed the utility of the Washington State Rubric on critical thinking (which Lewiecki-Wilson noted is currently being adapted at her university). Ultimately, the group felt that the rubric may not be appropriate for formative writing, which spawned a discussion of how exploratory writing can reveal critical thinking. Rounding out the panel, Deb Martin discussed the development of a course entitled “What’s Wrong with Normal?: Disability, Normalcy and Social Justice” (also the title of her presentation). As noted on Martin’s handout, this course focuses on introducing environmental, discursive, and political systems that perpetuate the status quo of the body and physical difference; on identifying strategies of resistance to such normative structures; and on recognizing each individual’s participation in the permanence and change of those systems. Martin identified how these foci were aligned with critical reading/writing/research, collaboration, and time management course goals. Like the other speakers on this panel, Martin discussed the role of student reflection and disability identity’s intersections with other identities, particularly noting how queer theory will invigorate conversations about disability in her course. This panel posed stimulating questions for the audience: how can personal experience be used productively to think about disability? how can discussions of transnational identities incorporate disability? what does it mean to critically write about disability? how can we not only understand prejudice surrounding disability, but respond to it? The panel not only provided the theoretical “answers” I’ve explored above, but practical ones as well: by engaging online discussions; by using literature in new ways; by rethinking our rubrics; by designing courses that incorporate resistance strategies. Furthermore, this panel questioned typical conference presentation tactics by resisting the temptation to “talk at” audience members and instead providing a multi-modal experience that “embodies” disability studies pedagogy through active workshopping, by providing scripts to follow along with, and by creatively using visual presentation. Like so many of the panels that incorporated disability studies at this year’s CCCC, this panel not only “talked the talk,” but demonstrated accessible presentation strategies and articulated how disability topics illuminate understandings of all “bodies” in the writing classroom |
Previous Message