Join us to meet Stephanie Kerschbaum, U.W. professor and author of "Signs of Disability."

How can we learn to notice the signs of disability?
We see indications of disability everywhere: yellow diamond-shaped "deaf person in area" road signs, the telltale shapes of hearing aids, or white-tipped canes sweeping across footpaths. But even though the signs are ubiquitous, Stephanie L. Kerschbaum argues that disability may still not be perceived due to a process she terms " dis-attention."
To tell better stories of disability, this multidisciplinary work turns to rhetoric, communications, sociology, and phenomenology to understand the processes by which the material world becomes sensory input that then passes through perceptual apparatuses to materialize phenomena--including disability. By adding perception to the understanding of disability's materialization, Kerschbaum significantly expands our understanding of disability, accounting for its fluctuations and transformations in the semiotics of everyday life.

Professor Kerschbaum has been honored with the 2021 Lisa Ede Mentoring Award by the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition. A lovely article and so much more information here.

Information on her publisher's website here.

And a fantastic article in the Edmonds Beacon, here.

Watch our recorded event on our facebook page here.