Creating a Culture of Access Series

The Writing Institute is delighted to host a series of spring events focusing on creating a culture of access. This series is also supported by the Composition Program.

The most up to date information is as follows:

Ditching "Resilience" for Cultures of Care

Ada Hubrig and sarah madoka currie, Friday, January 19, 2-3:30pm (Zoom)

Through this conversation, Dr. currie and Dr. Hubrig elaborate on their work in "Care Work Through Course Design," moving beyond the ableism of institutional frameworks of "resilience" to discuss how they both work to enact a culture of access in their classrooms through course design choices. This conversation will be open access, pending pre-registration.

Recommended reading prior to the event: "Care Work Through Course Design: Shifting the Labor of Resilience" (shared via Pitt library system)

Gender Aporia: On Trans OCD and Rhetorical Un/certainty (talk)

Remi Yergeau, Thursday, February 1, 2-3pm (Zoom)

In this talk, Dr. Yergeau will examine rhetorical constructions of what is popularly termed “trans OCD,” an OCD subtype popularly attributed to presumed cisgender people who experience intrusive thoughts about being transgender. Building upon frameworks from transgender studies and disability studies, Yergeau will unpack how constructs of "gender confusion" are deployed by anti-trans actors and mainstream OCD discourse to represent being trans as a contested form of gender certainty. 

Recommended readings: V. Jo Hsu, "Irreducible Damage: The Affective Drift of Race, Gender, and Disability in Anti-Trans Rhetorics" and Alexandre Baril, "Transness as Debility: Rethinking Intersections between Trans and Disabled Embodiments"

Getting Stuck on Getting Stuck, or Composing on Mad Time (workshop)

Remi Yergeau, Friday, February 2, 2-4pm (Zoom)

In this workshop, participants will think together about access-creation strategies in the writing classroom. Among other questions, participants will consider perseveration as a framework for contextualizing concrete strategies and developing methods to hone, practice, and re/situate neurodivergent modes of composing. While perseveration is not a unifying theory or magic explanation for thinking about the capaciousness of neurodivergent composing, Dr. Yergeau's hope is that it provides an entry point, a way of working through some of the frictional intricacies that might attend our lived experiences in the writing classroom and beyond. This workshop will be limited to 20 participants from the University of Pittsburgh.

Prior to this workshop, participants should read the following brief chapters in Crip Authorship Disability as Method : 1) Introduction 2) Mel Chen's "Chronic Illness, Slowness, and the Time of Writing" 3) Cameron Awkward-Rich's "On Still Reading Like a Depressed Transsexual" 4) Remi Yergeau’s "Composing Perseveration / Perseverative Composing" (reach out to Jessie Male if you have difficulty accessing the material).

How to Read Mad Black Feminism

Therí Pickens, Friday, February 23, 2-4pm (Zoom)

In this workshop, Dr. Pickens will take participants through a close analysis of Octavia E. Butler's Fledgling, using the first chapter as the starting point for discussion. Pickens will lead a conversation about how to analyze this specific text using the various lenses deployed in her book Black Madness :: Mad Blackness. This workshop will be limited to 20 participants from the University of Pittsburgh.

Overcoming Ableist Writing Instruction

Allison Hitt, Friday, March 22, 2-3:30pm (Zoom)

Based on ideas from Dr. Hitt's book Rhetorics of Overcoming: Rewriting Narratives of Disability and Accessibility, this presentation focuses on accessible writing instruction. The idea that disabilities must be overcome is a cultural and medical narrative with a lot of power, and this ableist narrative frequently manifests in higher education. There is a tendency to try to diagnose disabled students and default to accommodations rather than crafting more accessible pedagogical environments. In this presentation, participants will discuss strategies for designing writing classrooms and curricula that are accessible and equitable, rather than simply accommodating of difference. This talk will be open to all who pre-register prior to the event.

Register here. Please register by 9am on the day of the event. If you do not receive a link to the talk by the morning of the event, contact Jessie Male at jem496@pitt.edu.

We Are All Unwell: Mental Health, Disability Justice, and a Pedagogy of Unwellness

Mimi Khúc, Friday, March 29, 2-3:30pm (Zoom)

Join us as Dr. Mimi Khúc facilitates a conversation on mental health grounded in her new book dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss (Duke University Press), a creative-critical genre-bending project reconceptualizing mental health through critical arts approaches and the framework of a pedagogy of unwellness: the recognition that we are all differentially unwell. An intimate series of letters, dear elia explores Asian American unwellness at the intersections of race, ableism, and the university, and invites readers to recognize in it the shapes and sources of their own unwellness.  This talk will be open access to all who pre-register prior to the event.

NOTE

These events are also part of ENGLIT 2925 Creating a Culture of Access, a one-credit seminar facilitated by Dr. Jessie Male, postdoctoral associate in Disability Studies. For this seminar, four 1-hour discussions on Zoom supplement the workshops listed on this page. In addition, there are reflective writing assignments. Books from the visiting authors are provided to all members of the class. Class will meet via Zoom from 2-3pm on these Fridays:

Jan 26

Feb 9

March 1

April 12

The class is open to any interested graduate or upper-level undergraduate students. Faculty members are also welcome and do not need to register for the credit; if they complete the seminar, they will receive a letter saying that they completed the 2024 Creating a Culture of Access Series so that they can claim this professional development on their CV and in their yearly report.

Please note that we are committed to curating accessible events. Contact Jessie Male if you have any questions about access or specific accommodation requests.

Past Events

2023 Creating a Culture of Access Series