Productive Chaos: Disability, Advising, and the Writing Process

Because many faculty and graduate students pursue disability studies projects in an institutional vacuum (often being the only disability studies person in a department or institution), it’s exciting when faculty and graduate students come together to work on disability studies projects. Such has been the experience of the two authors of this piece: a graduate student who recently completed her Master’s thesis on hyperactive/ADHD rhetorics (Griffin) and her thesis advisor, whose research area is disability studies, rhetoric, and writing (Amy). As we’ve worked together, we’ve excitedly shared research that enriches both our writing projects, and we’ve exchanged teaching ideas to make our classrooms more inclusive. We’ve had the chance to work interdependently, including on this piece, where one of us got the project going and the other supplied the creative spontaneity we needed to finish it. Further, in our case, we’ve had the chance to openly identify as disabled and use crip humor to navigate our work together. Alongside these benefits, there are what we sincerely and euphemistically call generative tensions, which occur when access needs and desires conflict, when power dynamics re-assert themselves, and when attempts at change and adaptation fail.University Writing Cente

Multimedia Composition: Inclusion in a Digital Age

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Amy Vidali’s upper-level undergraduate seminar employs inclusivity as a lens through which to reassess common methods in multimodal composing: visual rhetoric, auditory rhetoric, and hypertextual rhetoric. For instance, Vidali asks students to consider how Temple Grandin’s Thinking in Pictures complicates some of the common assumptions that visual rhetoric scholarship imparts about seeing and knowing. The curriculum is structured evenly across texts from digital rhetoric and disability studies, with works from each field spanning genre and mode. In keeping with the diversity of course texts, Vidali asks students to compose broadly. Assignments include analyzing a personal experience in comic form; a musical genre analysis, in which students present their findings through podcasts; and an accessibly designed hypertext. Instructors will find Vidali’s syllabus a useful launching point for assignment and reading ideas, but perhaps most notable is the syllabus’s attention to accessibility (see, for example, the disability inclusion statement) as well as its embedded links to the course blog, which features student writing

Cytoskeletal Dynamics: A View from the Membrane

Many aspects of cytoskeletal assembly and dynamics can be recapitulated in vitro; yet, how the cytoskeleton integrates signals in vivo across cellular membranes is far less understood. Recent work has demonstrated that the membrane alone, or through membrane-associated proteins, can effect dynamic changes to the cytoskeleton, thereby impacting cell physiology. Having identified mechanistic links between membranes and the actin, microtubule, and septin cytoskeletons, these studies highlight the membrane’s central role in coordinating these cytoskeletal systems to carry out essential processes, such as endocytosis, spindle positioning, and cellular compartmentalization

Writing About Disability, With Disability: A Review of Stephanie Kerschbaum's Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference

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Out of Control: The Rhetoric of Gastrointestinal Disorders

This article suggests that IBS, and its relationship to disability studies, can be better understood by examining the rhetorics surrounding gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. To understand the function of GI rhetorics, I examine three rhetorical sites: (1) communal meal settings and the rhetorical politics of food refusal; (2) historical and contemporary texts that gender gastrointestinal distress; and (3) rhetorics of cure and control in advertising for GI-related products, particularly Zelnorm and Activia. The article concludes that changing attitudes about gastrointestinal disorders is not so much about controlling our bodies, but reclaiming the rhetorics of these disorders

Assignment: Disability & Open Letters

This assignment describes how students can "speak back" to problematic disability representations through writing open letters. A short introduction, reading list, and assignment are supplied

From Your New Book/Media Review Editors

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Inclusion vs. Seclusion: A Review of Looking after Louis by Lesley Ely

This review focuses on the messages embedded within both images and text in children's picture books. It includes a thorough analysis of Looking after Louis by Lesley Ely, detailing how its illustrations and text sometimes contradict each other, creating a complicated representation of integrated education. "Inclusion vs. Seclusion" argues that while the book attempts to offer a positive portrayal of disability in the elementary classroom, its images and text convey a negative portrayal of disability, distancing a child with a disability from his/her peers. By comparing this picture book with another closely related text, this review examines the possible effects Looking after Louis might have on young readers

Introduction: Disability Studies in the Undergraduate Classroom

No abstract available

Praxis, Volume 14, No. 01: Access and Equity in Graduate Writing Support

Contents: Introuction: Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing -- Agency, Liberation, and Intersectionality among Latina Scholars: Narratives from a Cross-Institutional Writing Collective -- Writing While Black: The Black Tax on African american Graduate Writers -- Productive Chaos: Disability, Adivisng, and the Writing Process -- Friere’s Pedagogy of Love and a Ph.D. Student’s Experience -- Writing with Your Family at the Kitchen Table: Balancing Home and Academic Communities -- Creating a Community of Learners: Affinity Groups and Informal Graduate Writing Support -- Alejandra Writes a Book: A Critical Race Counterstory about Writing, Identity, and Being Chicanx in the Academy -- “We Don’t Do That Here”: Calling Out Deficit Discourses in the Writing Center to Reframe Multilingual Graduate Support -- The Re-Education of Neisha-Anne S. Green: A Close Look at the Damaging Effects of “A Standard Approach,” the Benefits of Code-Meshing, and the Role Allies Play in this Work -- Equity Before “Equity”: Catalytic Mentoring and Professional Development for an Openly Gay Writing Center Tutor -- “I Cannot Find Words”: A Case Study to Illustrate the Intersection of Writing Support, Scholarship, and Academic Socialization -- Afterword: Narratives that Determine Writers and Social Justice Writing Center Work Asao B.University Writing Cente