Event location: All seminars will be digitally presented via Zoom.

Contact: A zoom link will be e-mailed to you following your registration (zoom links will be sent automatically via the confirmation).

The 2021 AVETH Social Justice Seminar Series is focused on disability rights and studies. Each year, this seminar series concentrates on a theme to create scholarly opportunities to learn more about social justice. We hope participation in the seminar series stimulates your curiosity and interest to be deliberately inclusive in your administrating, leadership, advising, mentoring, and teaching. Deepening your understanding of disability is important for everyone, and it is essential to promote the growth and evolution of ETH in addition to the newly green-lite Barrier-Free Project at ETH (https://bit.ly/3aTzl2B). If you have any questions or comments or would like to become more involved in social justice at ETH please reach out to diversity[at]aveth[dot]ethz[dot]ch or visit our website (https://www.aveth.ethz.ch/diversity/).

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Seminar 1. How to Build an Inclusive World

Speaker: Dr. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Professor emerita, Department of English, Emory University

Date: November 3, 17:00-18:00

Pronouns: she/her

Summary: Garland-Thomson’s presentation addresses the ethics of world building, of how we make and use our worlds. It poses ethical, social, and political questions such as: What kind of shared world have we built together? What kinds of people share the world we build? How does the shared world we build shape the human communities we live in and use together? How can citizens, our organizations, and our communities work together to build more just, diverse, and inclusive shared world?
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Seminar 2. “Disability Studies Methodologies: Using Quantitative and Qualitative Methods to Uncover Nuances of Disabled Experiences in Higher Education”

Speaker: Dr.  Margaret Price,  Associate Professor, Department of English, Ohio State University

Date: November 11th, 17:00-18:00

Pronouns: she/her

Twitter: @pricemargaret

Summary: Dr. Margaret Price shares details from her mixed-method (survey + interviews) study of disabled faculty in higher education, focusing on the different kinds of knowledge that are built through different methodologies. Key questions include these: What motivations and experiences drive disabled people’s decisions on the job?; and What do disabled people know about working in higher education that nondisabled people need to know? Ultimately, she maps ways that quantitative and qualitative methodologies can work together to build robust knowledge about disabled experiences and lead to greater access for all.
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Seminar 3. Academic Ableism: Eugenics, Accommodation, and Design

Speaker: Dr. Jay Dolmage, Professor of English, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo

Date: November 16h, 17:00-18:00

Pronouns: he/him

Twitter: @jaydolmage

Summary:  This talk will focus on the impact of academic ableism beyond infrastructure and built space: what historical structures and discourses situate disability in academia with such difficulty and dissonance? Can we locate the continuum between academic eugenics, logics of minimal accommodation, defenses of ableism under the aegis of rigour or fairness, and the neoliberal academic “future”?
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Seminar 4. Against ableism in teaching and scholarship

Speaker: Dr. Stephanie S. Rosen, Accessibility Strategist and Librarian for Disability Studies, University of Michigan Library

Date: November 30th, 17:00-18:00

Pronouns: she/her or they/them

Summary: In this session, participants will learn key concepts and critical questions related to disability, accessibility, and ableism in teaching and scholarship. The session will offer participants practical strategies and resources to address their own ableism and to make their teaching and other work more accessible.
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