New Directions in Black Disability Studies Conference
Welcome to the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, please find a PDF version of the conference program below
NDBDS Conference Program
Full-text program
Program Overview
8:00 AM Breakfast at Minor Hall
9:00-10:30 AM First Panel Session
10:30-10:45 AM Break
10:45-12:15 PM Second Panel Session
12:15-1:15 PM Lunch in Minor Hall
1:15-2:45 PM Third Panel Session
2:45-3:00 PM Break
3:00-4:30 PM Fourth Panel Session
4:30-4:45 PM Break
4:45-6:45 PM Keynote Panel
7:00 PM Dinner at Minor Hall
8:00 PM Concert
Program
(All times are EST)
8:00 AM – Breakfast at Minor Hall
9:00-10:30 AM – First Panel Session
In the Wake of Partus: Black Women, Disability, and Social Reproduction
Room: Minor 125
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/84846035262
Chair: Leslie Alexander, Rutgers University
Olivia Haynes, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“She Breeds Too Fast”: Enslaved Black Maternity and Social Reproduction in 18th and 19th Century Print Culture.
Keziah Anderson, Harvard University
Reproducing (Dis)Inheritance: Imperial Expansion & the Enduring Mark of the Black Mother’s Womb in Postbellum Indian Territory.
Bea Pearson, Rutgers University
Impaired and Imperfect: A Historical Meditation on Disability, Gender, and Devaluation in Slavery's Archive.
Daniela Valdes, Rutgers University
"I slept on and on": Historicizing Neurodivergence in the Archives of Criminalization.
Narrating Black Disability: Autoethnography, Autobiography, and Literature
Room: Minor 110
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/89342092464
Chair: Alexandria Smith, University of Virginia
Sinchan Chatterjee, University of California, Berkeley
Down with the Ivory Tower: Reading Self-Narratives of Black Autistic Individuals.
Matida Daffeh, University of Toronto
An Autoethnographic Exploration of the Intersections of Race, Disability, Immigration, and Religion: A Black African Refugee Mother’s Story.
Robert Volpicelli, Randolph-Macon College
Ralph Ellison’s Visually Impaired Man
10:30-10:45 AM – Break
10:45-12:15 PM – Second Panel Session
Disability in (Post)Colonial Nigeria
Room: New Cabell 309
Zoom: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/99227052211?pwd=ob0HNUsWR1lndR3TpSY0tT1E869Clh.1
Chair: Nemata Blyden, University of Virginia
Vitalis Nwashindu, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
“From Moral to Physical Disabilities”: An Interrogation of the impact of European Colonialism on the notion of disability among the Igbo of southern Nigeria,1860-1960.
Theophilus Okunlola, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Notes on Curative Violence, Colonial Biomedicine, and Black Spirituality and Care Ethics.
Muhammed Faisol Olaitan, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso
Interrogating the Exclusion of Women with Disability from COVID-19 Pandemic Emergency Responses and their Lockdown Experiences in Lagos State, Nigeria.
Rasheed Alao Hassan, Florida International University
Urban Threat: Disability in Colonial Western Nigeria, 1900-1960.
Room: New Cabell 323
Zoom: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/95776793919?pwd=reUk84Gs9hVP4ecx6PQ5N9dpgXCXRa.1
Chair: Mandy Rispoli, University of Virginia
Malachi Chukwu, Washington State University, Pullman and James Onukwu, Federal University Otuoke
The Other Experiences of Black Disabled Students in Higher Education in Africa: Expanding Inclusion.
Kat Stephens-Peace, Ball State University
Amelia Palmer, Gallaudet University
Addressing Racism and Disability Discrimination in 19th and 20th Century Canada.
Building Capacity for Black Mad Liberation
Room: Minor 110
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/89342092464
Chair: Ngozi Alston
Discussants: Rise Osby, Joselia Rebekah Hughes, Elmina Bell
12:15-1:15 PM – Lunch in Minor Hall
1:15-2:45 PM – Third Panel Session
Carceral Systems, Psychiatry, and Pathologized Black Criminality
Room: New Cabell 309
Zoom: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/99227052211?pwd=ob0HNUsWR1lndR3TpSY0tT1E869Clh.1
Chair: Micah Khater, University of California, Berkeley
Elizabeth Maher, University of Illinois, Chicago
Oddicle and Crazy Survival : Talking Back to the Criminalization and Pathologization of Black Neuroexpansivity in the Psych Ward and on the Page.
Sarah Malone, University of Illinois, Chicago and Julian Thompson, University of Illinois, Chicago
The Micropolitics of Community Reintegration in Mental Health Courts.
Shelby Pumphrey, University of Louisville
Meeting at the Crossroads: Towards a Hoodoo History of Black Disability.
Room: Minor 110
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/89342092464
Chair: Rezenet Moges-Riedel, California State University, Long Beach
Kianna M. Middleton, Dartmouth College
Being One and Being with Black Disability Histories: Toward a Mad Black Archive
Jerrold Hirsch, Truman State University
“I Worked As Long As I Was Able": Slavery, Freedom, and Disability in the FWP Slave Narratives
Suchitra Chatterjee, Brighton University, and Mary L. Shannon, University of Roehampton
Billy Waters as a ‘Disability Trailblazer’: addressing histories of Race and Disability in Curatorial Practice.
Decolonial Critiques of Disability Studies: African Perspectives
Room: New Cabell 323
Zoom: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/95776793919?pwd=reUk84Gs9hVP4ecx6PQ5N9dpgXCXRa.1
Chair: Jaira J. Harrington, University of Illinois, Chicago
Juliah Modula, University of Free State
Economic and Infrastructural Support Needs in the Rural Families of Children with Intellectual Disabilities in Limpopo Province, South Africa.
Joachim Nyomi, World Bank Project in Zambia
Decolonizing the Ethics Committees in Disability Studies: Reflections from the Global South-The Zambian Experience.
Rachael Wanjagua, University of Texas, Austin
A Call to Reimagine Research Methodologies in Disability Research in the African Continent.
2:45-3:00 PM – Break
3:00-4:30 PM – Fourth Panel Session
New Theoretical Perspectives on Black Disability: On Age, "Autigender," and the Crip Zombie
Room: Minor 125
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/84846035262
Chair: Kelsey Henry, Princeton University
Suzanne Nimoh, University of Texas, Austin
Unearthing the Zombie as a Black, Crip, Animal.
Tolonda Henderson, University of Connecticut
'We're Just Kids': Adultification as Racial Injury in Mark Oshiro's Anger is a Gift.
Danielle Procope Bell, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Looking Towards Black Feminist Critical Autism Studies.
Defining Black Disability: US Histories of Rights, Labor, and Citizenship
Room: New Cabell 323
https://virginia.zoom.us/j/95776793919?pwd=reUk84Gs9hVP4ecx6PQ5N9dpgXCXRa.1
Chair: Elizabeth Ellcessor, University of Virginia
Frances O’Shaughnessy, University of Toronto
Black Soldiers and Disability as a Racial Category in US Pension Law.
Keith Rosenthal, City University of New York
The Struggle Against Racial Segregation at the New York Association of the Blind in the 1930s.
Sarah Orsak, University of Virginia
Racial Liberalism’s Disability Metaphors.
Intersections of Gender, Disability, and Blackness in the Long Nineteenth Century
Room: Minor 110
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/89342092464
Chair: Jenifer Barclay, University of Buffalo
Jennifer W. Reiss, University of Pennsylvania, Becoming “Mumbet”: Disability, Domestic Labor, and the Limits of Emancipation in the Early Republic.
Mia Edwards, University of Warwick, Emotion and Physical Disability amongst Enslaved Men in the Nineteenth Century U.S. South.
Kathryn Angelica, Purdue University Fort Wayne, “Borderland between Earth and Heaven”: Interabled and Multigenerational Black Womanhood within Boston’s Home for Aged Colored Women
4:30-4:45 PM – Break
4:45-6:45 PM – Keynote Panel
New Directions in Black Disability Studies Keynote Panel
Room: Minor 125
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/84846035262
Chair: Robert T. Vinson, University of Virginia
Presenters:
Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, University of New Brunswick
Rezenet Moges-Riedel, California State University, Long Beach
Therí Pickens, Bates College
Dennis Tyler, Fordham University
7:00 PM – Dinner at Minor Hall
8:00 PM – Concert
WaWa’s World
Room: Minor 125
Zoom: https://cwm.zoom.us/j/84846035262
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following groups at UVA for their generous support of the conference: Carter G. Woodson Institute, Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation, Page-Barbour Lectures, Disability Studies Initiative, Department of English, ASL Program, Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality, Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. We would also like to thank the Disability History Association, the Virginia Association on Higher Education and Disability, the Department of History at William & Mary, and the African Journal of Disability for their support of the conference.
Support for the travel of international scholars came from the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation. The Disability History Association supported the travel of three graduate students whose historical research is being presented at the conference.
As the Program Committee, Jennifer Erkulwater, Kelsey Henry, Sarah Orsak, and Aron Marie, committed hours of their time to this conference. They freely gave their time to review all of the excellent paper submissions and arrange the successful submissions into the exciting panels you will attend today.
I would like to personally thank everyone at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for their support of this conference. Robert T. Vinson taught me the moving parts of conference planning and encouraged me throughout. Nemata Blyden provided critical support during the grant writing process and Kevin Gaines provided important feedback throughout the last year. Debbie Best, Randy Swift, James Perla, and Gabrielle Mashkouri were each generous with their advice and support of this project. Without their work, this conference would not have been possible.
Additionally, the Disability Studies Initiative at UVA provided important support for the development of this conference. I would especially like to thank Elizabeth Ellcessor for connecting me with several important individuals on grounds and for advising me during the grant writing process.
Kristin Roush and Martina Svyantek were essential to the development and implementation of the conference’s accessibility plan.
I would also like to thank Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy and Laurel Daen who graciously shared their experiences planning the Disability in Vast Early America Conference with me. Their ideas were foundational to the conference you are now attending.
I would especially like to thank our Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, Keith Mayes, Rezenet Moges-Riedel, Therí Pickens, Dennis Tyler for their commitment to the field and support of the conference.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the difficulty of carrying on our research and activism in these times. The basic programs that many rely on to live their lives are under threat, and we know that Black disabled people are particularly vulnerable to the threats to education and Medicaid funding. People are being disappeared, many from our college campuses, simply for using their voice to denounce genocide. In this increasingly dismal political climate, may all of our research be stones in the foundation of a better world.