Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 17, No. 3 (2020)

Review of Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education, edited by Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, Laura T. Eisenman, and James M. Jones

Cat Williams-Monardes
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
cs.williams.morades@gmail.com 

Today’s writing center administrators and tutors have grown increasingly invested in the intersections of writing center scholarship and Disability Studies, as scholars in the field have challenged us to attend to both our staff and students with disabilities. In this very journal’s 2015 special issue, Rebecca Babcock compiled disability-informed tutor pedagogies, Hillary Degner et al. explored ways to create safe spaces for tutors, and Sharifa Daniels et al. advocated strategies for inclusion while protesting the pathologizing of disability. In addition to these voices from within our community, however, we must seek out those beyond the walls of our centers and the pages of our journals. We must seek out voices speaking to broader examinations of Disability Studies in the academy. Only by welcoming critique from without can we inform our practices with the insight that comes from situating our experiences in a much larger context, expanding our vision to encompass the presence of disability in the university as a whole. 

These outside voices resound in Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education. In their introduction, editors Kerschbaum, Eisenman, and Jones state their goal to explore the complexities behind individual decisions to disclose disability in the university, taking an intersectional approach that considers factors both internal (e.g., identity) and external (e.g., available accommodations). They embark with the premise that disclosure is often politically-charged and highly risky, especially for faculty and administrators, who are often left without the supports provided to students. Possibly the richest aspect of the collection is the plurality of visions and experiences brought together by the editors. Theoretical essays, autoethnographies, and empirical studies construct a comprehensive view of the accommodations, policies, and intercommunications that surround disability and disclosure. Evidenced by interviews, personal stories, and qualitative and quantitative data, the claims made in this collection charge faculty, staff, administrators, and graduate students entering the field to evolve ideologies and improve practices.

While directed towards this broader audience, Negotiating Disability proves relevant to everyone devoted to furthering the cause of accessibility. IWCA’s 2019 conference “The Art of it All” held ten well-attended sessions on disability and accessibility in the writing center, spinning a common thread that is woven throughout Negotiating Disability: we cannot claim a commitment to diversity and inclusion until we are actively working to support our tutors and writers with disabilities, a process that demands implementing Universal Design attending to the voices of disability among us so that we might meet their unique needs as they arise. With this in mind, Negotiating Disability has the power to ignite and nurture conversations in the following areas: evolving tutor pedagogies, supporting staff with disabilities, and designing empirical studies to interrogate issues relating to disability. 

The text is divided into four sections—identity, intersectionality, representation, institutional change and policy—each containing five chapters. The section on “Identity” calls for critical awareness of the many approaches to and embodiments of disability. The authors share pedagogical strategies and qualitative data that illustrate the instability disabled students often experience in the classroom. In “Intersectionality,” the authors interrogate the pressure that those in higher education place on self-disclosure as a means to enact institutional change. In the writing center, as in the university at large, we must understand that students themselves recognize the many risks of disclosure. Through frameworks offered in Negotiating Disability, we can understand that a writer’s choice to share a disability with their tutor is a multifaceted decision with multifaceted effects. 

 The next two sections take up a different question: in what ways does the institution engage with disability? “Representation” stresses the need to develop healthy rhetorics that center disability within conversations on social justice and access to learning and university resources. “Institutional Change and Policy” dives into the tangible changes faculty and administrators can make to support students and faculty with disabilities, the latter of which are often ignored. While reading these chapters, we should ponder two questions: (1) how can the writing center increase student (both writer and tutor) awareness of available services? And (2) how can the center spur institutional reform for disability alongside racial and linguistic reform?

When placed in the context of the writing center, two of the most intriguing chapters are those written by Shahd Alshammari and Wendy S. Harbour et al. Alshammari’s chapter “A Hybridized Academic Identity: Negotiating a Disability within Academia’s Discourse of Ableism” interrogates the stigma surrounding disabilities—stigma that often leads academics to “pass” (i.e., choose not to disclose their disability to colleagues or students). With graceful strokes, Alshammari artistically blurs the line between abled and disabled, embracing the existence of a fluid state of being that empowers individuals with disabilities to transcend ableist barriers erected by the institution. While it has yet to receive the nuanced study it merits from our field, the concept of disclosure is critical to the writing center. Understanding the identity-based factors that influence students’ decisions to disclose to the academy at large helps us understand their decisions to disclose to individual tutors or to request accommodations from the center. Perhaps even more importantly, Alshammari teaches us the importance of imagining disability’s presence in every room regardless of whether someone has laid claim to it. For, more often than not, the disabilities that affect student writing are invisible.

In “‘Overcoming’ in Disability Studies and African American Culture: Implications for Higher Education,” Harbour et al. grapple with the rhetoric of “overcoming” and its conflicting meanings to Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory. In Disability Studies, overcoming is treated as an oppressive concept that assumes people with disabilities must want to aspire to “normal” existences. In contrast, Critical Race theorists find a far more positive meaning in “overcoming,” which evokes the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement. The most important takeaway from this chapter is to recognize how the multifaceted identities of every student demand intersectional understandings. Tutor training must emphasize that each student with disabilities has not only unique needs but also unique preferences on the ways their disability is articulated.

One reminder while reading this collection is to reflect on both the differences and similarities between the authors’ approaches to pedagogy and the institution versus those we might embody in our own centers. For instance, where Rocco and Collins (“An Initial Model for Accommodation Communication between Students with Disabilities and Faculty”) explore ways to successfully negotiate accommodations in the classroom, the writing center administrator should consider how knowledge of such conversations might benefit a tutor who works closely with a writer struggling to secure appropriate accommodations from their professor. Engaging with the collection in this read-and-reflect process will allow us to transpose and contextualize valuable lessons.

Negotiating Disability is an evocative reminder that those of us engaged in writing center work must consider and articulate the needs of specific disabled populations situated within and without our centers. Only by doing so can we begin to grapple with the implications of disclosure as it affects our spaces. Whether or not our staff and student writers choose to disclose, we must act upon our responsibility to cultivate safe spaces supportive of all disabilities.

Works Cited

Babcock, Rebecca D. “Disabilities in the Writing Center.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015. http://www.praxisuwc.com/babcock-131

Daniels, Sharifa et al. “Writing Centers and Disability: Enabling Writers through an Inclusive Philosophy.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015. http://www.praxisuwc.com/daniels-et-al-131

Degner, Hillary et al. “Opening Closed Doors: A Rationale for Creating a Safe Space for Tutors Struggling with Mental Health Concerns or Illnesses.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015. http://www.praxisuwc.com/degner-et-al-131

Kerschbaum, Stephanie, L., Eisenman, Laura T. and James M. Jones, editors. Negotiating Disability: Disclosure and Higher Education. U of Michigan P, 2017, doi:10.1002/nha3.20243