IEE Intersectional Disability Studies Strand

The Intersectional Disability Studies Strand (IDSS), under the SJSU Lurie College of Education's Institute for Emancipatory Education (IEE), serves as a community-engaged, culturally sustaining space that centers disability visibility and disability as an intersectional identity. Our strand provides specific resources and support to engage intersectional disability studies and accessibility in education.

Intersectional Disability Studies Speaker Series

Learn from Lydia X.Z. Brown, advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people. Connect with Lydia on Twitter @autistichoya.

• Lydia's full bio

  • Lydia X. Z. Brown, Esq. – autistichoya.net -is an advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. They are Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability, as well as Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network.

    Lydia is also adjunct lecturer and core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program, and adjunct professorial lecturer in American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies. They serve as a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, chairperson of the ABA Civil Rights & Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, board member of the Disability Rights Bar Association, and representative for the Disability Justice Committee to the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee.

    Lydia founded the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, and they are creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot. Lydia is past chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, and former Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.

We were thrilled to host Alice Wong, disabled activist, writer, editor, media maker, consultant, and founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project. Connect with Alice on Twitter @SFdirewolf.

ASL interpreters and live captioning will be provided. If you are in need of additional accommodations, email [email protected].

• Alice's full bio

  • Alice Wong (she/her) is a disabled activist, writer, media maker, and
    consultant. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture created in 2014.

    Alice is also a co-partner in four projects: DisabledWriters.com, a resource to help editors connect with disabled writers and journalists, #CripLit, a series of Twitter chats for disabled writers with novelist Nicola Griffith, #CripTheVote, a nonpartisan online movement encouraging the political participation of disabled people with co-partners Andrew Pulrang and Gregg Beratan, and Access Is Love with co-partners Mia Mingus and Sandy Ho, a campaign that aims to help build a world where accessibility is understood as an act of love  instead of a burden or an afterthought.

    Alice’s areas of interest are popular culture, media, politics, disability representation, Medicaid policies and programs, storytelling, social media, and activism.

    She has been published in the New York Times, Vox, PEN America, Catalyst, Syndicate Network, Uncanny Magazine, Curbed SF, Eater, Bitch Media, Teen Vogue, Transom, Making Contact Radio, and Rooted in Rights.

    Her activism and work has been featured in the CNN original series United Shades of America (Season 3, Episode 4), Huffington Post, WNYC’s Death, Sex, and Money podcast, KQED’s Truth Be Told
    podcast, Wired, The Hill, Autostraddle, Werk It: The Podcast, WNYC, The Guardian, Roll Call, WBUR radio, Al Jazeera, Teen Vogue, Bitch Media, Rewire, Vice, Esquire, CNET, and Buzzfeed.

    In 1997 she graduated with degrees in English and sociology from Indiana University at Indianapolis. She has a MS in medical sociology and worked at the University of California, San Francisco as a Staff
    Research Associate for over 10 years. During that time she worked on various qualitative research projects and co-authored online curricula for the Community Living Policy Center, a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center funded by the National Institute on Disability,  Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.

    Recognized for her service to the community and activism at the local and national level, Alice received the Beacon Award by the San Francisco Mayor’s Disability Council in 2010 and the Disability Service Award by the University of California, San Francisco in 2011. From 2013 to 2015 Alice served as a member of the National Council on Disability, an appointment by President Barack Obama. Alice is the recipient of the 2016 AAPD Paul G. Hearne Leadership Award, an award for emerging leaders with disabilities who exemplify leadership, advocacy, and dedication to the broader cross-disability community.

    Recently, Alice launched the Disability Visibility podcast in September 2017 and self-published Resistance and Hope: Essays by Disabled People in October 2018.

    In 2018 Alice was featured in the Bitch 50, a list recognizing the most impactful creators, artists, and activists in pop culture influential feminists by Bitch Media and Colorline’s 20 X 20, a group of transformative leaders reimagining what it means to advance racial justice.

    In 2020 Alice was named by Time Magazine as one of 16 people fighting for equality in America. Alice published and edited #ADA30InColor, a series of essays by disabled people of color in July. Alice was featured with multiple activists on the cover of British Vogue’s September issue. For the Pop Culture Collaborative, she guest edited Break The Story Volume IV: Disability Visibility, a snapshot of disability culture. Along with 19 other disabled artists, Alice was named a Disability Futures fellow, a grant by the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Alice also received Indiana University Bicentennial Medal for her contributions to disability justice and broadening the reach of IU around the world.

    In 2021, she was named a changemaker by Marie Claire magazine.

    Alice is the editor of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, an anthology of essays by disabled people. She is currently working on her memoir, Year of the Tiger (Vintage Books,
    2022).

    She also works as an independent research consultant as part of her side hustle.

Learn from 12-year old Helena Lourdes Donato-Sapp, self declared "Black Girl Scholar", who uses her art and voice for social, economic, and environmental justice! Learn more about Helena Lourdes Donato-Sapp on her website. 

Project Leaders

Dr. Saili S. Kulkarni is an associate professor at the SJSU Lurie College of Education. Her research highlights the intersections of disability and race in teacher education. She uses DisCrit (Disability Studies Critical Race Theory) to understand how teachers, particularly special education teachers of color, enact resistance in schools. Dr. Kulkarni also examines restorative and humanizing practices for young children of color with disabilities.

Dr. Sudha Krishnan is an assistant professor at the SJSU Lurie College of Education. Sudha’s research is focused on how literacy practices using pedagogies based on socio-cultural theory like multiliteracies provide challenging and empowering education for students with disabilities. She is interested in interrogating the deficit thinking surrounding students with disabilities and promoting anti-deficit pedagogies in the classroom. She is examining the use of constructivism in special education and teacher perceptions of ability in students with extensive support needs. Sudha is keen to forward the equity and justice orientation of the College of Education and a meaningful start has been her involvement with the disability studies strand in the Institute of Emancipatory Education.

Project Team Members

• Dr. Emily A. Nusbaum, Project Consultant
• Dr. Rebeca Burciaga, Project Consultant
• Marcella McCollum, Project Consultant
• Leroy F. Moore, Jr., Community Activist Consultant
• Sherry Meng, Family Advocate Consultant
• Samuel Bland, Graduate Student Assistant
• Monica Gonzalez, Alumni Graduate Assistant

Funders

• Lurie College Strategic Planning Grant

Collaborators

• SJSU Transformative Leadership Minor
• SJSU Center for Faculty Development

Foundational Resources

Books

• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
• Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World by Django Paris
• Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century edited by Alice Wong

Articles

• Moore Jr., L. F., & Kitossa, T. (2021). A Krip-Hop Theory of Disabled Black Men. Appealing Because He Is Appalling: Black Masculinities, Colonialism, and Erotic Racism.
• Invalid, S. (2017). Skin, tooth, and bone–the basis of movement is our people: a disability justice primer.

Podcasts

• Disability Visibility Project | Episode 11: Crip Bodies and Crip Aging

Videos

• CripCamp: A Disability Revolution
• Intersectionality & Disability, ft Keri Gray, the Keri Gray Group #DisabilityDemandsJustice

IDSS Foundational Activities

• Building an intersectional disability studies minor
  • EDLD 101 Transformative Leadership Minor Syllabus
• Disability Visibility Lurie College Faculty Book Club
• Self-Study of Multiple Stakeholders Building an Intersectional Disability Studies Syllabus
• Speaker Series