Court(ney) Felle, ""Our Love Language of Unspokens": Contemporary Poets on Chronic Pain"
My proposal focuses on how contemporary poets communicate—and foreground the incommunability of—chronic pain using techniques of what I am calling “fragmentation.” Building off theories of pain that emphasize the gap between phenomenological experience and witness interpretation, I am interested in how poets with chronic pain negotiate this chasm to create their own poetic genre grounded in shared recognition and use of fragmentation. This speaks to larger questions of disabled and chronically ill community-building, including across space and time, especially as intensifying series of crises produce "fragmentation" in our own lives and self-narratives.
Within “fragmentation,” I include techniques such as hard enjambment, punctuation (especially em dashes and slashes), nonlinear phrases and pacing, and inconsistent punctuation and line design, all of which bring readers into the multifaceted and chaotic experience of pain itself. In using these techniques, contemporary poets draw fruitful textual attention to how pain is not fully communicable, shifting the terms of what they are trying to communicate from nondisabled-centric demands to “prove” pain to disabled-centric criticism of the very system that demands proof in the first place. Importantly, contemporary poets do not merely co-opt existing devices but create their own uses distinct from nondisabled poetic approaches. These forms speak toward fellow disabled readers, developing affinity and suggesting possible kinship models in line with recent scholarship. For chronically ill readers often isolated through time, physical space, and emotive and political space, these forms could also become a tool of identification for readers overcoming internalized ableism as well as a tool of radicalization into political chronically ill subjecthood.
Poets under consideration include Khadijah Queen, torrin a. greathouse, Aurora Levins Morales, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Topaz Winters, Meg Day, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Jillian Weise. (The working title borrows from the poem “Sick4Sick” by torrin a. greathouse.)
Ayesha Khurshid, "Disability, Exclusion, and Systemic Crises: Liberating Learning as a Sustainable Solution for Resilient Communities"
This paper investigates the complex relationship between disability and inclusion and how it ties in with marginalization and systemic oppression. Disability, is oftentimes framed within social structures that institutionalizes exclusion of individuals from accessing equitable opportunities and reinforce social inequities for disabled experiences and realities. The ableist constitution of ideological and systemic marginalization is manifested in the policies and cultural praxis that creates a continuum to impact the agency via limiting access to education, health, employment, and social/civic participation. Alternatively, inclusive education, offers a transformative opportunity to challenge the exclusionary and inequitable practices. Inclusive education creates equal opportunities and builds collaborative spaces for learners with disabilities that are informed by values of social inclusion and accessibility. This approach reimagines learning-scapes as a site of liberation, one that values the right to self-determination, embraces diverse dis/abilities and a commitment to social justice for de-ideologizing oppressive systems and every day practices. Therefore, my research question is: How can inclusive education serve as a liberatory practice in addressing the systemic marginalization of individuals/learners with disabilities, particularly in the context of societal crises? Qualitative methodology will be used and data will be gathered through in-depth interviews from participants that belong to academia, public sector, and nonprofit sector in Boston, Massachusetts. In conclusion, by positioning inclusive education as catalytic for societal transformation, this paper unpacks the need for liberatory practices in (re)designing educational policies and pedagogy. Such a liberatory lens will not only mitigate crises but will critically interrogate the exclusionary oppressive structures and institutional practices that reinforce inequities and accelerate vulnerabilities during emergency and crises situations.
Ren Lovegood, "Breaking Bad Wages: An exploration of disability labor valuation and liberatory praxis"
This paper examines the historical and social contexts that have shaped disability inequality in the United States, focusing on the institutionalization of subminimum wage (SMW) practices. Prior to the rise of industrial capitalism, people with disabilities (PWD) were valued for individual contributions to their communities. Labor was not yet explicitly defined by wage exchange or individual productivity. The Industrial Revolution shifted the discourse in which efficiency and economic productivity were now considered connected to individual value. The discursive portrayal of PWD as inefficient placed them in direct opposition to the prevailing Protestant work ethic of the period, which framed self-sufficiency and hard work as ideal worker qualities. A contradiction emerged between disability and efficiency in which PWD are expected to work despite being constructed as inferior workers.
Discursive artifacts are powerful tools that have constructed disability through various strategies that reproduce realities in which a valuable worker is assumed to be able-bodied. This paper posits that the practice of SMW has been institutionalized through the discursive framing of the disabled as legitimately less valuable in the context of work. Disability inequality is thus embedded into organizational processes and justified through the myth of meritocracy. Utilizing an exploration of praxis and change, I suggest the contributions PWD make to society may currently lie outside our socially constructed definition of ‘labor’.
Drawing on Hochschild’s (2012) “second shift”, which examines women’s unpaid emotional and domestic labor, I explore the unrecognized and inherent human value of PWD. This research re-imagines how an application of pre-industrial conceptualizations of labor that values each person for their unique contributions to society might be applied in the context of modern social systems. Through theoretical exploration of the reproduction of ableist practices through discourse, I am to conceptualize a re-humanization of disability in the context of social constructions of labor.
Satwika Paramasatya, "Resisting Invisibility: The Crisis of Health Security and Human Rights among LGBTQ Community in Indonesia"
This paper examines the critical intersection between health security and LGBTQ rights in Indonesia, focusing on the structural and policy-level exclusion of LGBTQ communities from equitable healthcare access. Using Foucault’s concept of biopower and securitization theory, this analysis explores how Indonesian policies and societal norms perpetuate health insecurities among LGBTQ individuals, framing them as threats to national stability and public morality. LGBTQ individuals face systematic discrimination in healthcare, further compounded by structural violence at social and institutional levels. This study argues that Indonesian LGBTQ communities' health insecurity stems from a state-sponsored biopolitical agenda that defines public health through restrictive moral and ideological lenses. Drawing on conflict analysis, the paper highlights the urgent need for a rights-based approach to health security, emphasizing the role of inclusive policy reforms in mitigating structural violence. By critically assessing this conflict, the paper proposes pathways for policy reformation that foreground the health needs and human rights of LGBTQ communities as essential to societal resilience and ethical governance.
