About the WFU Disability Studies Initiative

Purpose

The aims of the Disability Studies Initiative at Wake Forest are to support faculty in building interdisciplinary and intersectional Disability Studies content into their pedagogy and research, to give students and other members of the Wake community the opportunity to examine issues raised by disability in all facets of life from a humanistic perspective, and to work in concert with campus partners to improve the accessibility of academic life at Wake Forest.

Structure and Activities

The WFU Disability Studies Initiative is headed by a faculty director and supported by an advisory committee of faculty, staff, and students. The Initiative organizes programs such as: faculty, staff, and student reading groups on disability studies, workshops and lectures, artistic and cultural events related to disability, and the awarding of course-development grants in order to encourage faculty to offer courses in the area of disability studies.

Brief History

During the 2015-2016 academic year, a group of faculty and staff from across the University met together in a disability studies reading group hosted through the Professional Development Center. During academic-years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the Humanities Institute sponsored an interdisciplinary faculty reading group on the topic of Disability Studies. The group included faculty from Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, History, Philosophy, Anthropology, Sociology, English, Russian, Religion, and Math. The group read and discussed a number of works in the field of Disability Studies, met with campus partners to discuss academic accessibility at Wake, and began to workshop participants’ own scholarship in the field of Disability Studies. The WFU Disability Studies Initiatve was developed out of these reading groups and was officially launched in the fall of 2021.