Associate Professor of Writing and Chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Kim Drake began her scholarly career by focusing on protest writing and rhetoric, composition theory, and historically disenfranchised voices in American literature. But a few seminal events, particularly one in 1990 and another in 2014, plus the inspiration of her students, led to the addition of disability studies to her teaching, research, and activist repertoire.
In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law, prohibiting discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public. Around this time, Drake started to notice a lack of elevators and accommodations for deaf students at Berkeley; it’s also when disability studies as a field began to develop, and Drake, who was already writing on race and gender in terms of trauma theory, began to connect psychological trauma to the burgeoning field. She also began to think that her own mental disability diagnosis could contribute to her scholarship or and service to her profession.
“My students are the ones who have always brought the new laws and the general lack of accessibility to my attention—they highlight all of the areas on campus inaccessible to students with physical disabilities, and they helped found the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC) at The Claremont Colleges, which helps faculty recognize and understand student accommodations,” reflects Drake. “Over the years, Scripps has made changes, like adding an elevator to Balch Hall and to various residence halls, but there are still areas on campus that not all students can access.”
As her students’ interest in and demand for increased accessibility grew over the years, so too did Drake’s, and what began as a pragmatic interest in accessibility developed into academic study. With a 2014 Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges Grant for faculty development in Critical Disability Studies and Universal Design for Learning, Drake developed a Core II course with Professor Jennifer Armstrong called “Constructions of (Dis)Ability.” In 2016, Drake gave a Core I lecture on Susan Nussbaum’s book, Good Kings Bad Kings, which, unlike so many representations of disabled people that posit disability as a burden to overcome, presents disabled characters as complex yet typical teenagers who heroically protest their marginalization.
“Our society is ableist in that people without disabilities just assume that people with disabilities are miserable or unhappy or don’t have good lives,” says Drake. “They also then assume that we should eradicate disability, which amounts to a kind of genocide. Think of cochlear implants—they ‘correct’ a ‘deficit,’ but they also eradicate a culture and a community.”
In addition to teaching alternate perspectives on disability in the classroom, Drake is active in co-curricular programming on campus. Along with Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Dorothy Cruickshank Backstrand Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies Piya Chatterjee, Drake has been organizing an anti-racist, feminist, queer, disability-focused student group that allows students to engage in conversations with each other about their experiences in these contexts. “Piya suggested that we invite a few speakers, and I realized that the disabled choreographer and dancer Alice Shepperd, who was already going to be at Scripps for a public performance, would have a lot to say to this group.”
Sheppard is coming to Scripps as part of a weeklong residency of talks and workshops that will culminate in a public performance sponsored by Scripps Presents, held on Thursday, February 6 at 7 p.m.
Drake had met Sheppard in a roundtable discussion at the Berkshires Conference on the History of Women. “I heard Alice and saw her in action, so I was overjoyed by the possibility of her visiting Scripps,” says Drake.
“I think audiences who attend the performance will be leave having their received wisdom, categories, and assumptions challenged—perceptions they may not even know they have,” says Drake. “That’s really the foundation of what a liberal arts college should do—teach us to think differently, challenge our ideas, be open, and see something new—a different kind of society.”