2022 NextGen Professors Public Keynote
Everyday Survival and Collective Action: What We Can Learn From Disabled Faculty About Access and Care
Speaker: Margaret Price, Associate Professor for English and Director of the Disabilities Studies Program at The Ohio State University
Tuesday, June 21, 2022, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
The pandemic has raised surprising questions about everyday academic life. For example, “How is it possible that I am required to do a full-time job while also providing full-time care for my family?” or “How can I negotiate questions of ‘safety’ with my co-workers, my community, even my closest loved ones?” Long before 2020, however, these questions were already active topics of conversation in interdependent communities of people who are disabled, BIPOC, queer, and marginalized in other ways. In this interactive talk, Dr. Margaret Price draws upon data from a study with disabled faculty to highlight the themes of access and care. Those themes are often co-opted by educational institutions which claim to center access and care while pursuing initiatives that in fact achieve the opposite. Stories from Price’s survey and interview study allow us to learn more about the everyday lives and strategies of disabled faculty members. They also demonstrate that all participants in higher education will benefit from a cultural shift toward shared accountability and interdependence in order to foster sustainable forms of access and care that support workers.
About the Speaker
