Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education

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University of Michigan Press, Nov 22, 2017 - Education - 254 pages
Academic Ableism brings together disability studies and institutional critique to recognize the ways that disability is composed in and by higher education, and rewrites the spaces, times, and economies of disability in higher education to place disability front and center. For too long, argues Jay Timothy Dolmage, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation. Examining everything from campus accommodation processes, to architecture, to popular films about college life, Dolmage argues that disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 Steep Steps
41
2 The Retrofit
67
3 Imaginary College Students
99
4 Universal Design
115
Framing the Failures of Higher Education
153
Commencement
185
Notes
193
Bibliography
205
Index
223
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About the author (2017)

Jay Timothy Dolmage is Associate Professor of English at the University of Waterloo.