Disability Studies and Action Collaborative

Disability Culture, Scholarship, and Community

Category: Presentations and Panels

5th Annual UnConference kicks off with a public keynote on October 17

We at the WWU Institute for Critical Disability Studies are excited for now our 5th Annual Disability Studies & Action Collaborative UnConference happening the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, October 18 and 19, 2025, during Disability Action Month at WWU. While registration for the event has closed, we will be kicking off the event with a Pre-UnConference Keynote presentation on Friday, October 17 that will be free and open to all. This event is titled, Disability in Place: Unmaking as Practice presented by Dr. Kathleen Brian, and is hosted by the WWU Institute for Critical Disability Studies, WWU Disability Outreach Center, and Disability Access Center.

Join us at 11:00 am on Friday, October 17 in-person in Academic Instructional West (AW) room 302 of the WWU Bellingham Campus or virtually on Zoom. After the presentation at 12:00 pm, there will be a light lunch reception sponsored by the WWU Disability Outreach Center.

Disability in Place: Unmaking as Practice

From 2021 to early 2025, the National Parks Service and the National Council on Public History fostered the creation of an interdisciplinary anthology of place-based disability history.

Then, on the verge of its completion, the politics of our moment unmade it.

Join editor Dr. Kathleen Brian to discuss the life and lives of Disability and Place, the first accessibly written, peer reviewed work to address historical intersections of disability and place, forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press.

Event Details

  • Date: Friday, October 17, 2025
  • Location: AW 302 (Academic Instructional West, room 302) & Zoom
  • Time: 11:00 am – 12:00 pm for presentation.
    • Lunch reception follows, from 12:00 – 1:00 pm


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Upcoming Event: Faculty Roundtable on May 12, 2022

On May 12th at 3:30pm, we’ll be hosting a Roundtable on Teaching Disability in the Disciplines. This fully online event will bring faculty from across the university together to talk about how disability-related content fits into their teaching. The aim is to show how disability studies can find a home in a range of fields, which will provide models for other faculty interested in teaching about disability. 

Learn more and register to attend by clicking the link below: 

Faculty Roundtable: Teaching Disability in the Disciplines

Join us for the DSI’s first event of the academic year!

 

The Disability Intersections Roundtable. 

This virtual roundtable — to be held from 1:30-3:00 p.m. PST on Saturday, October 16 — marks the Western Washington University Institute for Critical Disability Studies’ first event of the academic year, and we will be joined by Dr. Nirmala Erevelles, Dr. Margaret Price, Dr. Ellen Samuels, and Dr. Rana Yaghmaian, who will offer brief 7–10-minute presentations about their research related to disability and intersectionality. This will be followed by an open-ended conversation in which presenters and members of the audience will be invited to participate. We aim to create a space for difficult conversations, particularly about the ways that disability, race, and health status interact.

This event is sponsored by the Chuckanut Health Foundation and the WWU Institute for Critical Disability Studies.

Use this Zoom link to join the webinar: https://wwu-edu.zoom.us/j/94952448140?pwd=K0tpcjlJWGpmczVkVXNGTnhwUG1OZz09

Attendees on campus wishing to view the roundtable can do so in CV 207. All in-person attendees must be in compliance with WWU’s COVID-19 policy and remain masked and socially distanced during the event.