“Signs of Disability” topic of Writing Program Spring Guest Lecture

About the event

The Washington State University Writing Program’s spring 2019 guest lecture, “Signs of Disability: Perception, Materiality, Narrative,” will be presented by author Stephanie Kerschbaum.

“Dr. Kerschbaum is an emerging thought leader and researcher into ‘markers of difference,’ cues that people intentionally display as they communicate as well as interpret from others’ communicative choices,” said Writing Program Director and Regents Professor Victor Villanueva. Kerschbaum is an associate professor of English at the Univ. of Delaware. As a deaf person herself, Kerschbaum has a hard time thinking of deafness as a disability that is “invisible” given that she interacts with the world while using very visible cues, like wearing hearing aids, staring at faces while people talk, and working with sign language interpreters. In her award-winning book, Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference, she addresses conversations about diversity in higher education, institutional racism, and the teaching of writing by looking at the ways people define themselves and are defined by others within institutional contexts.