Lee / Champion / Doherty-Harrison Towards an Accessible Academy

Perspectives from Disabled Medievalists
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-5015-1739-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 238 Seiten

Reihe: ISSN

Higher Education is a rich and diverse environment which allows so many different types of people and disciplines to flourish. Medieval Studies is a particular confluence of this, with the meeting of history, literature, history of art, archaeology, and more. The contributors describe their lived experience of disability and how this intersects with the discipline of Medieval Studies, embracing both the challenges and the joy this can bring. They discuss teaching, research, and just existing within the university, bringing in theoretical approaches as well as linking to medieval texts. provides a unique perspective on the state of accessibility within this field and in the university environment more broadly.

This volume sits between work which centers the experience of disabled academics and which provides guidance for supporting disabled students. While providing real-life testimonies of disability in the academy, many chapters also include practical advice on best practice in supporting disabled scholars and students, as well as how the authors feel connected to the medieval sources we study.

The book is also a call to action for all of its readers to actively practise allyship, providing clear examples of how we might all implement the advice given by contributors to improve the accessibility of our academy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lee, Alexandra R.A.

Champion, E.R.P.

Doherty-Harrison, Hope

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Invalidität, Krankheit und Abhängigkeit: Soziale Aspekte
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Teildisziplinen der Pädagogik Sonderpädagogik, Heilpädagogik
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Schulen, Schulleitung Universitäten, Hochschulen

Leseproben

Introduction: Towards an Accessible Academy

Alexandra R.A. Lee

The academy is inaccessible. Or perhaps I should say the academy is still inaccessible. Scholars and activists have been shouting about this now for decades.1 Disability often seems to feature only as an afterthought in the fast-paced, time-poor world of Higher Education. There is an expectation to keep up, and often the feeling that any weaknesses need to be concealed. Attempts to enshrine accessibility for students seem, at least on the surface, to be present and correct, as systems exist for undergraduates to apply for accommodations. However, this is often a difficult and convoluted process, relying on a swift or pre-existing diagnosis as well as a smooth journey through the disability office system.2

This flawed but seemingly established system is often much more complicated to navigate as a member of staff in Higher Education, particularly as a precarious one. If someone is only at an institution for a few months, then it can be hard to secure the necessary accommodations in time, particularly before the start of teaching. We also know that representation is important, but many of us do not feel comfortable declaring our impairments as individuals, either to our colleagues or to those we teach. While it’s crucial to be able to see people like you in the positions you hope to fill, openly declaring a disability is often quite tricky. I had never really thought of myself as an activist, but the lack of universal access to higher education from a disability standpoint turned me into one. Knowing how difficult it is to apply for accommodations has made me flexible in my approach and determined to use my power for good.

This volume presents nine accounts of disability in Higher Education, from the perspective of medievalist disabled academics and our allies. We tell our stories in our own words as both students and staff, revealing what it’s really like to exist in the academic world with an impairment. There is a balance between the intimately personal, and more theoretical ideas about disability. These stories cover a wide range of experiences including difficult topics like asking for help in hairy situations, but also some of the very positive things we have experienced as our ally colleagues stand by us and help us get the support we need. It is my hope that in reading and engaging with these stories, you will gain a better understanding of disability in academia. The book offers both a general introduction to ideas around disability as well as a more substantial discussion of the intersections between disability and Medieval Studies.

The authors speak particularly from their perspective as disabled medievalists. Medieval Studies carries a particular set of expectations. We are expected to speak, or at least read, multiple languages in their modern and premodern iterations. We are supposed to spend lots of time in the archives poring over our medieval manuscripts, but as Christopher Baswell so succinctly states, these infrastructures are still not accessible for us.3 We are required to be able to read these manuscripts easily, and to incorporate their contents into our work. We are expected to navigate disciplinary boundaries and different ways of working with aplomb. These essays reflect on how our impairments have interacted with the specific requirements of medieval scholars. The medieval period also has much to offer Disability Studies, as demonstrated by the burgeoning number of studies and projects over the last couple of decades.4 Many of the essays in this present volume also showcase this. Julie Singer incites us to think about impairments not as a “condition of the biological human” but instead to “seek material traces of medieval disability within the textual human.”5 We cannot ask our medieval counterparts how they felt, but we can read much into the texts, images, and material objects they left behind. We also continue in the tradition of Richard Godden in bringing the medieval past into our present reality, while exercising necessary caution.6 This book consequently offers a new stance on disability from this medieval perspective.

Although we have many expectations as medievalists, there are many things which are common to all of us who venture into the “Ivory Tower.” Miriamne Ara Krummel summarizes in almost painful detail the feeling of needing to appear like everyone else while learning to live with a new and changing diagnosis: “I ask for no special favors.”7 I hope that many of the themes we outline are also universally applicable: we all have specificities in our fields that we have to contend with. We lay bare our bad experiences without sugar coating them, but we are also keen to share the good. Many of us discuss the individual learning processes that we have undergone to reach our current understandings of our own impairments, and this is what we ask of the reader: to learn and develop your own understanding from our words. Disabled people don’t magically have a fully formed appreciation of the world of disability, and indeed many of us contend not only with the ableism of the world, but also internalized ableism. This is a learning process for all of us, and we ask you to join us on this journey.

Definitions

Medievalists with Disabilities works to make Medieval Studies more accessible, particularly focusing on conference accessibility. I will tell the story of the group in more detail below. We are predominantly UK-based, and consequently the essays in this volume focus mostly on UK institutions of Higher Education; this is where our largest impact has been. Disability Studies in terms of Higher Education and conferences is a burgeoning field; many studies so far focus on America, such as those of Jay T. Dolmage and Margaret Price.8 Studies in the UK, such as Ableism in Academia, offer perspectives from scholars across a wide variety of fields, and there are projects currently underway such as “Disability Matters,” led by Dan Goodley and Paul Martin at Sheffield.9 We contribute to these conversations from our specifically medieval standpoint.

This volume considers the idea of an accessible academy. By “academy,” I mean the structures of a university, broadly speaking, and all its processes. This includes teaching, accommodation, extracurricular activities, as well as the variety of activities expected such as conference and seminar attendance, mentoring students, research trips, and studying in libraries. The academy covers a wide range of people, too: undergraduates and postgraduates, postgraduates who teach, early-career researchers, precarious staff, and lecturers, readers, and professors. There are also those who support us, like librarians, research officers, administrators, and finance officers. This broad description shows how much is encompassed within the academy and the importance of taking a nuanced approach when considering accessibility. There can be no one-size-fits-all approach when considering this gamut of activities and individuals. Nevertheless, this does not mean that we cannot consider support for all of these situations, and this volume offers some insight into particular instances where we need to think more seriously about access.

Medievalists with Disabilities has always defined “disability” from a very broad standpoint. We have sought to include rather than exclude, and do not require that people identify as disabled or have a diagnosis to come under our umbrella. We do not require disclosure of conditions but welcome all people who want to discuss disability in Higher Education, whether disabled people, chronically ill people, neurodivergent people, or allies. It is especially important that these conversations include allies wherever possible, so that they break beyond the bounds of disabled people just talking to each other. This is in part one of the aims of this book: to be loud about the often-taboo subject of disability in Higher Education, and for us as disabled people within academia to share our experiences.

There are many different models of disability. The medical model situates disability within the disabled person, as a problem to be fixed. We are fundamentally opposed to this model. The social model says that society is the disabling factor, creating physical and social barriers for people with impairments.10 The social model differentiates between an impairment, which is something like an injury or an illness which can have a physical or psychological impact, and a disability, which is a barrier faced due to that impairment, e.g., a building being inaccessible due to lack of step-free access. This means, for example, a preference for identity-first language: disabled person, autistic person, blind person. This all the while recognizing that some people do prefer to use person-first language to refer to themselves. This model is not perfect, however, and has integral flaws in terms of encompassing the reality of many disabled people.11 Chronic pain would still exist even in a perfectly accessible world, as would a variety of unpleasant sensations and experiences. Other models include the cultural model, which suggests meeting different populations and geographies on their own terms,12 and...

Über Autor(innen)

Alexandra R.A. Lee, NYU London, UK; Hope Doherty-Harrison, History of Art, University of Edinburgh, UK; E.R.P. Champion, independent scholar, UK.