Critical Disability Studies Brown Bag Lunch: Danielle Cowley
"Occupying the Borderlands: Negotiating the Liminal Spaces of Dis/Ability and Adolescent Girlhood"
Join the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability for our first critical disability studies brown bag lunch, featuring new SFSU Professor of Special Education Danielle Cowley:
Occupying the Borderlands: Negotiating the Liminal Spaces of Dis/Ability and Adolescent Girlhood
This study is a starting point about how constructions of girl/womanhood may contribute to gender inequities experienced by adolescent girls with dis/abilities. Through qualitative methods with four adolescent girls with dis/abilities and evoking Anzaldua’s (1987) concept of the borderlands, findings indicate the young women negotiated experiences along the continuum of girl/womanhood: friendships and social activities, sexuality, and transgressive femininity. At other times mothers’ protective discourses and the culture of special education produced more limited spaces for them to occupy. Implications will be discussed including re-thinking the final or extra years of schooling offered to students with dis/abilities, paying attention to ableist and sexist schooling practices, comprehensive and non-discriminatory sex education, and opportunities to engage in age-appropriate curriculum and social activities.
We are eager to make this an accessible event!
Please refrain from wearing scented products so that people with chemical sensitivites may join us. For other accommodation requests, please contact Emily Beitiks by March 1, 2014: 415-405-3528 or beitiks@sfsu.edu