Date: April 22nd 2022
Time: 2-4pm
Presenter 1, Name: Anna Slebioda
Presenter 2, Name: Tekla Babyak
To register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/drf-seminar-series-20212022-event-5-tickets-306284815127
Talk 1, Title: Edith Stein`s philosophy as a new framework for disability studies
Talk 1, Abstract:
Edith Stein was a Jewish woman – philosopher who converted into Catholic and became a nun. However, she died in a concentration camp along with other Jewish people. This indicates her faithfulness to primary identity. –
This as well as her academic work, for instance on woman and her place in the society provide a new framework for analysing femininity in disability.
The presentation covers biographical facts as well as summary of Edith Stein`s philosophy. These elements are next linked to analyses from disability studies area so that at the end a novel analytical framework is presented.
Talk 2, Title: Authoring Access: Navigating Scholarly Publishing with Disabilities
Talk 2, Abstract:
Disability accommodations for academic authors are unauthorized. Submission guidelines for book proposals and journal articles never offer any way to request accommodations. Indeed, disabled authors have no legal right to receive accommodations. Academic writing falls outside the capitalist purview of the ADA, which only covers paid work.
How, then, might disabled authors advocate for accessibility? What strategies could be used to communicate access needs when submitting work to peer-reviewed academic venues? These questions are large, even overwhelming, in the face of the ableist rigidity of the scholarly publishing industry. I will approach these questions through a personal case study: my self-advocacy for disability accommodations when submitting my work for academic publication.
In this case study, I theorize my positionality as an academic writer who has multiple sclerosis. One of my MS symptoms is an anxiety disorder caused by neurological damage to the fear centers in my brain. The disability accommodation that I need is for the editors and the peer reviewers to be encouraging and supportive when giving me feedback. My current strategy is to contact editors about my access needs before submitting my work to them. I do not send them my work unless they commit to honoring my access needs.
These interactions subvert power hierarchies in a potentially liberatory way. I disrupt (and “crip”) the standard script for author-editor interactions, for my initial exchanges with editors are about my access needs rather than my manuscript. Thus, during these initial exchanges, editors end up hearing more about my disability than about my academic research. Some editors have responded well to this dynamic, while others have refused to take my access needs seriously. What emerges from these interactions is the difficulty, but also the hopeful potential, of author(iz)ing one’s own disability accommodations as an academic writer.
Biographical information
Tekla Babyak (PhD, Musicology, Cornell, 2014) is an independent musicologist with multiple sclerosis. The ableist workforce has prevented her from finding any form of stable employment. Currently based in Davis, CA, she is an advocate for the inclusion of disabled independent scholars in academia.
Her work falls broadly into two categories: disability activism in musicology, and research on 19th-century musical aesthetics. As discussed in her Current Musicology article “My Intersecting Quests as a Disabled Independent Scholar,” her activist work combines practical and philosophical ideas about how to uplift disabled voices in music studies. Her musicological research interests include hermeneutics, disability studies, and German and French aesthetics. Recent and forthcoming publications include chapters in Historians Without Borders (Routledge) and Rethinking Brahms (Oxford University Press).
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