A Light in the Tower argues that excellent education and radical support for mental health struggles can coexist, and provides detailed advice for how to do so. Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal debunks claims that supporting student mental health harms educational rigor (coining the term “rigor angst” to discuss the fear that rigor is declining). She outlines actionable steps professors and administrators can take, including abandoning ableist and exclusionary campus culture; replacing “bad-hard” work that creates unnecessary logistical difficulties for students in favor of “good-hard” work that challenges them intellectually; providing an easy path to disability accommodations; and teaching accessibly for neurodivergent students.

Dr. Pryal examines the anxiety that plagues campuses as a result of exploited and overworked contingent faculty and students, the systemic and institutional burnout that affects higher education at every level, and the market-driven culture of toxic overwork. Addressing the stigma that haunts mental disability on campus, the ableism that hounds our teaching, and the cascade of mental health struggles that far too many faculty and students face, Dr. Pryal provides straightforward solutions to complex challenges.

Our guest is: Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal, who is an author, neurodiversity expert, and adjunct professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of A Light in the Tower, and other works including the award-winning Even If You’re Broken: Bodies, Boundaries, and Mental Health.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and creator of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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In the thirty years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, the lives of disabled people have not improved nearly as much as activists and politicians had hoped. In Crip Negativity (U of Minnesota Press, 2023), J. Logan Smilges shows us what’s gone wrong and what we can do to fix it.

Leveling a strong critique of the category of disability and liberal disability politics, Smilges asks and imagines what horizons might exist for the liberation of those oppressed by ableism—beyond access and inclusion. Inspired by models of negativity in queer studies, Black studies, and crip theory, Smilges proposes that bad crip feelings might help all of us to care gently for one another, even as we demand more from the world than we currently believe to be possible.

J. Logan Smilges (they/them) is assistant professor of English language and literatures at the University of British Columbia and author of Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (Minnesota, 2022).

Clayton Jarrard is a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts. His scholarly engagement spans the subject areas of Cultural Anthropology, Queer Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, and Religious Studies. Clayton is also a host for the Un/Livable Cultures podcast.

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For people who are living with disability, including various forms of chronic diseases and chronic pain, daily tasks like lifting a glass of water or taking off clothes can be difficult if not impossible. In Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds (Duke UP, 2023), Arseli Dokumacı draws on ethnographic work with differently disabled people whose ingenuity, labor, and artfulness allow them to achieve these seemingly simple tasks. Dokumacı shows how they use improvisation to imagine and bring into being more habitable worlds through the smallest of actions and the most fleeting of movements---what she calls “activist affordances.” Even as an environment shrinks to a set of constraints rather than opportunities, the improvisatory space of performance opens up to allow disabled people to imagine that same environment otherwise. Dokumacı shows how disabled people’s activist affordances present the potential for a more liveable and accessible world for all of us.

Dr. Arseli Dokumaci, PhD is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Media Technologies, and Director of the Access in the Making (AIM) Lab

A [full transcript of the interview](link) is available for accessibility purposes.

Clayton Jarrard is a Research Project Coordinator at the University of Kansas Center for Research, contributing to initiatives at the nexus of research, policy implementation, and community efforts

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A transcript of this interview is available [here]

Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (Library Juice Press, 2024) weaves together first-person narratives and case studies contributed from disabled archivists and disabled archives users, bringing critical perspectives and approaches to the archival profession. Contributed chapters span topics such as accessibility of archives and first-person experiences researching disability collections for disabled archives users; disclosure and accommodations and self-advocacy of disabled archivists; and processing and stewarding disability-related collections. Collectively, these works address the nuances of both disability and archives-critically drawing attention to the histories, present experiences, and future possibilities of the archival profession.

Dr. Gracen Brilmyer is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University and the Director of the Disability Archives Lab. Their research lies at the intersection of feminist disability studies, archival studies, and the history of science, where they investigate the erasure of disabled people in archives primarily within the history of natural history museums and colonial histories. This historical-archival research is complemented by empirical research on how living disabled people use and experience archives today. Their work has been featured in publications such as The Journal of Feminist Scholarship, Archival Science, and First Monday. Their research is shaped by their experiences as a white, Disabled, non-binary person. For more: here

Dr. Lydia Tang is an Outreach and Engagement Coordinator for LYRASIS. Previously, she held archivist positions at Michigan State University, the Library of Congress, and numerous graduate positions at the University of Illinois, where she received her MLIS and Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Passionate about accessibility and disability representation in archives, she served on the Task Force to Revise the Best Practices on Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities and spearheaded founding the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Accessibility & Disability Section (ADS). She is the 2020 recipient of SAA’s Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Awardand was recognized in three SAA Council resolutions as a co-founder of the Archival Workers Emergency Fund, for spearheading the Accessibility & Disability Section’s“Archivists at Home” document, and for the “Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities.” In addition to her professional service with SAA, she has contributed to accessibility initiatives within DLF Digital Accessibility Working Group and the ArchivesSpace open source software and community by leading the Staff Interface Enhancement Working Group, Development Prioritization subteam, founding the Usability subteam, and chairing the Users Advisory Council.

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A transcript of this interview is available [here]

A queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams, Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming (Duke UP, 2025) explores the pulsing core and porous edges of survival, sorrow, and dreaming. Blending poetry and creative nonfiction, emotion and activist thinking, Eli Clare invites us to unfurl ourselves into the lovely multitude of genders beyond the binary of woman and man, the fierceness of street protest, and the long slow time of granite. He sings to aquifers. Wrestles with the aftermath of child abuse and his family’s legacy as white settlers occupying Dakota homelands. He leans into history. Calls the names of the living and the dead. Connects his own tremoring body to a world full of tremors—earthquakes, jackhammers, quaking aspens. Unfurl reveals deep queer kinships between human and more-than-human, sentient and nonsentient. At every juncture, these poems and essays embrace porousness and the power of dreaming. Ultimately, Unfurl is an invitation to rebellion and joy.

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By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture (U Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Vanessa Warne demonstrates how reading by touch not only changed the lives of nineteenth-century blind people, but also challenged longstanding perceptions about blindness and reading. Over the course of the nineteenth century, thousands of blind people learned how to read by touch. Using fiction, essays, letters, and speeches authored by blind readers, By Touch Alone traces the ways in which literacy changed blind people's experiences of education, leisure, spirituality, and social engagement. Analyzing records of activism and innovation as well as frustration, this study documents the development of an inkless book culture shaped by blind readers’ preferences and needs.

While By Touch Alone features the writing and ideas of an understudied community of nineteenth-century blind authors, innovators, and activists, it also engages the work of sighted authors such as George Eliot and Rudyard Kipling to explore the culture-wide effects of reading by touch. The emergence of a new category of readers who did not rely on sight to read prompted sighted people to reimagine blindness and adopt more progressive attitudes toward blind people. In our own era, one characterized by the increasing digitization of our reading lives, Vanessa Warne’s exploration positions scholars and blind readers to navigate present-day developments and shape the future of their reading lives. A carefully contextualized study of how reading by touch shaped Victorian culture, By Touch Alone adds new chapters to the history of disability and reading.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcast

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What if we embraced neurodivergent ways of being not as deviations to be corrected but as vital ways of inhabiting the world? What new realities might emerge? Bringing a much-needed humanistic perspective to the study of autism and other forms of neurodivergence, Counter-Cartographies: Neurodivergence and the Errancies of Performance (U Minnesota Press, 2025) offers a bold reimagining of neurological difference, moving beyond rigid diagnostic frameworks to uncover more expansive, generative modes of existence.

Engaging the work of Fernand Deligny to trace how modern taxonomies of neurodivergence have hardened over time, Leon J. Hilton questions how these categories might instead serve as tools for remapping the world with neurodivergence at its center. At the heart of Counter-Cartographies is an exploration of performance and performativity that reveals how the norm of neurotypical reality is continually reinforced through acts of doing, redoing, and undoing.

Charting the historical shift away from “mind” and toward “brain” and moving fluidly across disciplines—from digital art and documentary cinema to cybernetics and radical mental health movements—Hilton illuminates the deep interconnections between performance, perception, and the historical construction of the “neurotypical.” Through close readings of works by William Pope.L, Mel Baggs, Wu Tsang, and others, Hilton also examines how neurodivergence has been represented, embodied, and materialized in contemporary art and media. Restless, engrossing, and persistently attuned to moments of rupture when the neurotypical order falters, Counter-cartographies charts a path toward a more capacious, imaginative world.

Leon J. Hilton is assistant professor of theatre arts and performance studies and co-convener of the Disability Studies Working Group at Brown University. He is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Social Text and on the advisory board of Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, a neurodiverse theatre company based in Providence, Rhode Island.

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The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the story of an Emmy Award-winning TV news Journalist, Stacia Kalinoski. The author's aim is beyond giving an account of her experience of epilepsy, her goal is to sensitize readers and inspire epileptic patients and other people battling with ailments that carry social stigma, emphasizing the importance of taking control of one's health. In the book, Stacia Kalinoski recounts her experience of visual distortions and feelings of déjà vu and jamais vujamais vu, which are auras that often precede more severe seizures. She discusses the physical injuries and memory loss resulting from her condition, particularly from temporal lobe seizures.

Stacia's narrative underscores the complexities of living with epilepsy and the potential for personal growth and empowerment through adversity. She highlights the effects of frequent episodes of seizure on maintenance of social relationships and the ability to reminisce about the past. Relating her experience, Stacia dwells on the importance of confronting the reality of living with epilepsy, she emphasizes the significance of understanding seizures to combat the stigma and fear surrounding the condition, and how surgery can improve memory loss and allow People Living with Epilepsy reconnect with their past. 

Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta

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In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Catalunya. They talk about Dr. Monzó-Nebot's new book The Social Impact of Automating Translation: An Ethics of Care Perspective on Machine Translation.

The conversation delves into ideological issues involved in the widespread use of machine translation and the real-life impact for those who may rely on machine translations in various situations. Esther’s research and the wide variety of contributions to the book highlight the need to open a discussion about instilling an ‘ethics of care’ perspective into the use of technology to make AI-generated translations more inclusive and relevant for the communities using them.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Ungendering Menstruation by Ela Przybyło discusses why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and disability. Honing a "cranky" approach to being a menstruating body expected to accept and embrace trauma, Ungendering Menstruation examines menstrual suppression, toxicity, and the cooptation of menstrual positivity rhetoric. Drawing on their own experiences as a toxic shock survivor and a menstrual pain and period dysphoria sufferer, Ela Przybyło questions why, on what terms, and for whom menstruation has been fixed around experiences of pain. Instead, they present a vision for menstrual justice that refuses the womaning of bleeding and the further erasure, dismissal, and denial of menstrual pain as real pain. If menstruating is framed as somatechnically elective, Przybyło contends, it provides avenues for both celebrating and appreciating cultures of bleeding as well as for remaining critical of the ways in which bleeding has been used as a transphobic and sexist tool to fix gender in place.

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