Call for Papers for an Edited Collection: Disability Disclosure in/and Higher Education
Co-editors: Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, University of Delaware, kersch@udel.edu
James M. Jones, University of Delaware, jjones@psych.udel.edu
Laura T. Eisenman, University of Delaware, eisenman@udel.edu
Overview: Many arguments about disclosing disabilities in higher education contexts are tied to
claims about the importance of showing disability as part of college and university environments
as a means for moving towards more inclusive and welcoming spaces. Indeed, on both small and
large scales, acts of identifying shared experiences can enact moments of solidarity that enable
continued persistence in discriminatory environments. These arguments, however, must
necessarily be tempered by the just-as-persistent reminder that disclosure, as both Mel Chen and
Ellen Samuels highlighted in their remarks at the “Disability Disclosure in/and Higher
Education” conference (http://www.udel.edu/csd/conference/index.html) held at the University
of Delaware in October, 2013, always intersects with other identity markers as well as with
privilege, and the risk-taking that accompanies disclosure is not experienced equally or in the
same ways by all.
In taking disability disclosure within higher education as a central point of departure, this
collection will build on recent scholarship that highlights the deeply rhetorical nature of
disability disclosure, as well as myriad metaphors for disclosure (passing, coming out,
masquerade, covering, in/visible disability) while maintaining focus on disclosures as complex
manifestations within particular social and institutional contexts. Within these contexts, how
disability is read and interpreted depends heavily on the context, the types of interactions that are
unfolding, interlocutors’ long- and short-term goals, the nature and experience of disability, and
many other contingencies (see, e.g., Kerschbaum, 2014).
This collection thus seeks to explore the richness of disability disclosure. Building on and
extending the work of the “Disability Disclosure in/and Higher Education” conference, this work
will explore questions about disability disclosures in all corners of higher education, from a
variety of theoretical, methodological, conceptual, and (multi)(inter)disciplinary perspectives. By
providing wide-ranging explorations of disability disclosure, this collection will highlight how
disability in higher education is not an issue relevant only to those who have disabilities, but one
which has far-reaching consequences across higher education.
Organization of the book: While the collection seeks to include essays submitted by conference
presenters and attendees, it is not a conference proceedings—this collection specifically aims to
include, but also move outside and critique the conference from new temporal and spatial
vantage points that have opened up through the conference and beyond. Thus, the proposed
volume will purposefully attend to gaps, absences, and omissions that were made apparent
during and after the conference. These gaps include attention to and representation by scholars of
color and the experience of faculty, students, and staff across diverse racial, economic, and social
class experiences and dynamics, as well as deeper social-scientific exploration of sites,
conceptions, and experiences of disability disclosure within higher education.
The book is tentatively divided into four key thematic sections, into which papers will be
organized and presented:
1) Intersectionality
Essays in this section will focus on ways that disability identities intersect with, emerge within,
and are influenced by myriad aspects of embodied presence and experience. How, and in what
ways, does disability infuse the experiences of abled and disabled bodies alike? In what ways
does disability converge with gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality, as well as other aspects of
identity performance, to shape the way disabilities are disclosed in a variety of ways and within
numerous contexts in higher education?
2) Institutional Change and Policy
This section will explore how attention to disability invites reconsideration of institutional
environments and policies. What does—or would—it mean for higher education to truly, as Jay
Dolmage (2008) has put it, “invite disability in the front door”? The essays in this section look at
past and current practices as well as imagine future directions for disability in institutional
policy. What policies are needed? How do past and present policies address disability? What
kinds of minds and bodies are imagined and addressed within such policies? What does disability
disclosure ask us to consider in light of such policies? How do various issues such as economic
access to academia intersect with disability, disclosure, and higher education?
3) Representation
How are disabilities represented within institutions of higher education? How do representations
of higher education—in popular media, literature, film, television, and advertising, among
others—imagine disability? How do representations of disability intersect with race, gender,
class, and other forms of identity? Given that these representations matter to the ways that
disabilities are read and understood by those within higher education, and to the ways that
various participants perform and enact disability, how do these different representations matter to
experience(s) of and around disability in higher education?
4) Disability Identity
While disability studies has worked to affirm disability as a positive and important element of
identity, it nevertheless remains important to carefully explore disability’s positive and negative
valences, including pride and shame—both of which were recurring themes at the “Disability
Disclosure” conference. Disability brings with it a complex web of interconnected and deeplyheld, internalized, and institutionalized orientations to disability, and resisting ableism within
identity remains deeply significant to disability studies today.
Submission Details: We invite proposals for submissions to this collection. Proposals should
include a title, contact information (including email, mailing address, and phone number, as well
as your preferred means of contact) and a 500-word abstract. Proposers should also indicate
which section of the collection their proposed essay might fit. Proposals are due via email to
ConferenceCSD@gmail.com by October 15, 2014. Contributors will be notified by December 1,
2014 of the status of their proposal. Full essays will be due by February 15, 2014, and the editors
will submit final revision suggestions and acceptances by April 30, 2015. Final revised
submissions will be due by June 1, 2015. The editors welcome queries and questions.