Conversations: The Future of Disability Studies

UCLA Disability Studies invites you to join us online for a series of action conversations among leading scholars, activists, and artists connecting the social-political momentum of disability justice movements with the rapidly evolving field of disability studies. 

Dates for this virtual series are being finalized for Winter 2022, program is tentatively:

Wednesday, January 19th, 2022 from 2-3:30PM (PT) – Conversation with Professor Sami Schalk and Professor Jina B. Kim, facilitated by Professor Juliann Anesi. View event recap and Youtube recording of the January 19th conversation.

Wednesday, February 9th 2022 from 2-3:30PM (PT) – Conversation with Judy Heumann, Professor Therí A. Pickens, and Cyrée Jarelle Johnson (Sins Invalid) facilitated by Beth Ribet. Second panelist to be announced. View event recap and Youtube recording of the February 19th conversation.

Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 2-3:30PM (PT) – Conversation with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Yomi S. Wrong, co-moderated by Dr. Beth Ribet and Professor Juliann Anesi. View event recap and YouTube recording of the March 9th conversation.

Wednesday, April 13th 2022 at 1PM (PT) – Book talk with Therí A. Pickens and discussants Professor Juliann Anesi and Tananarive Due on Black Madness :: Mad Blackness. View event recap and YouTube recording of the April 13th conversation.

Disability Studies is a groundbreaking field that examines the meaning and nature of disability from a variety of perspectives, including arts and humanities, health sciences, social sciences, public policy, design and technology, and education. 

Rooted in the disability rights movement, disability studies emerged as an academic discipline in the 1980s. The field’s growth in recent decades acknowledges the salience of disability across time and social context and the essential need for inclusion, access, and justice for individuals with disabilities, locally and globally.  

This series of virtual conversations on the Future of Disability Studies comes at a significant time in the history and development of the discipline. The coming academic year marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Society for Disability Studies in 1982, and fifteen years since the establishment of  UCLA’s Disability Studies minor in 2007. It is timely, then, for the disability studies community to consider its future, and for UCLA’s Disability Studies program, in particular, to plan to expand our curriculum to embrace the growing interests in the field.  

As disability studies continues to mature, in what directions should we grow? What critical questions should we ask? What impacts should we seek to have?