Rethinking Disability as a Universal Experience

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Many political scientists assume that disability has nothing to do with us. But according to the Centers for Disease Control, about 1 in 4 Americans has a disability, though many of those people do not think of themselves as disabled. When we add to that the family members and other loved ones who have close contact with or even care for disabled persons, that number grows. The odds are therefore good that a significant portion of the American Political Science Association membership is in this group of people affected by disability. Others have joined the significant number of scholars in other fields who have taken up disability as a category of analysis. On this panel, members of the newly formed Committee on the Status of Disability as well as political scientists with disability experience will explore the various dimensions of disability and discuss the panoply of issues facing members in their professional lives, ranging from outright discrimination to less obvious forms of exclusion such as feeling compelled not to mention disability in ourselves or our family members; difficulty in obtaining resources; and dealing with prejudicial attitudes and institutional policies, departments, and colleagues. We hope that attendees will help us think about other issues that may be affecting their professional lives, and develop ideas and possibilities for figuring out ways to deal with these.

Sub Unit

• Panels

Cosponsor

• Status Committees / Committee on the Status of Disability

Chair

• Nancy J. Hirschmann The University of Pennsylvania

Presenters

• Kristin Kay Lunz Trujillo University of South Carolina

• Julia Lynch University of Pennsylvania

• Isabelle Z Jensen University of Maryland

• Ann Kathleen Heffernan University of Michigan

• Jenn M. Jackson Syracuse University