On Disability and Academic Ableism- 5/16/2022

Conversation Overview

Messy Conversations in partnership with the Offices of Student Services and Disability Support Services is pleased to offer a presentation and community conversation by disability scholar, Dr. Jay  Dolmage. Dr. Ryan Kasmier, Assistant Provost and Director of DSS for AU Santa Barbara, will moderate this conversation.

Dr. Jay Dolmage’s biography:

I am committed to disability rights in my scholarship, service, and teaching. My work brings together rhetoric, writing, disability studies, and critical pedagogy. My first book, entitled Disability Rhetoric, was published with Syracuse University Press in 2014. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education was published with Michigan University Press in 2017 and is available in an open-access version online. Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability was published in 2018 with Ohio State University Press. I am the Founding Editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. 

Dr. Ryan Kasmier’s extensive higher education experience includes professional work at six different institutions, including the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and Antioch University Santa Barbara, where he has served as the Director of Student Services since July 2017. In his over 20-year career in student affairs, he has worked in leadership positions in academic support, housing, retention and persistence, new student orientation, and family services. Ryan has also taught public speaking, life and academic skills classes, and various other liberal arts courses. He is an active member of NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education). He has served in several positions for the AGAPSS (Administrators in Graduate and Professional Student Services) Knowledge Community, including Knowledge Community Co-Chair. Ryan holds a BS in Organizational Communication and Political Science from Central Michigan University and an MA in Organization and Leadership, with an emphasis in Higher Education, from the University of San Francisco. In May 2021, he completed his EdD in Higher Education Leadership from California Lutheran University.