SSSP 2026 Annual Meeting
Date: TBD
Time: TBD
CFP 27 - Critical Dialogue: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Exploring and Resisting Academic Ableism
Room: TBD
Sponsors: Disability, Mental Wellness, and Social Justice
Educational Problems
Organizer &
Presider/Discussant: Melinda Leigh Maconi, Moffitt Cancer Center
Description: Despite the existence of policies mandating accessibility in education, learning institutions of all types continue to perpetuate and reify ableism. Educational policies are not made with accessibility in mind but are instead created for certain bodies, minds, and abilities, with ad hoc accommodations later offered—often inconsistently—to those whose needs do not fit these norms. People with disabilities can and do resist this marginalization, yet they often remain within institutions designed to uphold ableism. This critical dialogue explores both the oppression of people with disabilities in academic settings and the forms of resistance that emerge in response.
Papers:
“‘Schools Don’t Give a Fuck about Mental Health’: Mental Health Discourse in a Public High School,” Karlyn J. Gorski, The University of Chicago
“Accessing Help through a Top Canadian University’s Not-So-Accessible Accessibility Office: Retracing a Disabled Doctoral Student’s Accessibility Advising Encounters,” Justin Chen, University of Toronto
“College, Ableism, and the Systemic Exclusion of People with Disabilities,” Sydney Ruskey, Wilkes University
“Dismantling Ableism in the Qualitative Research Process: Developing Guidelines for Understanding Lived Experiences of Disabled Communities,” Jimin Sung, Columbia University
“Diverging Debt Trajectories: Disability and Student Borrowing in Higher Education,” Jenna Maree P. Wong, The University of Texas at Austin
“In Support of the Masked Classroom: Enhancing College Student Engagement, Leadership, and Access through Course Masking Policies,” Atticus M. Wolfe, Agnes Scott College
“Intercepting Sanism in Higher Education,” Gillian V. Bryant, Arizona State University
“Limitations in the Field: On Disability, Reflexivity, and Embodiment in Ethnography,” Allison J. Wigen, Boston University
