The Stories We Tell

Amy T. Campbell, JD, MBE is the inaugural Associate Dean for Law & Health Sciences and Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago John Marshall Law School (UIC JMLS). She joined UIC JMLS from the University of Memphis School of Law, where she created and directed the Institute for Health Law & Policy. She received tenure from the SUNY Upstate Medical University, where she directed ethical and legal training of health professional and basic science students.

At UIC JMLS, Dean Campbell leads development of a new health law program, the Health Equity, Law & Policy Program (HELPP), set to officially launch in fall 2021. The vision of HELPP is to “create healthier communities and populations by transforming structures grounded in principles of health equity, justice, and inclusion.” It will be intentionally inclusive in its work, to develop health equity-promoting structures through interdisciplinary and community collaboration.

Dean Campbell’s law school-based teaching experience includes Health Law Survey, Mental Health Law, Health Law Seminar, Bioethics & the Law, and Public Health Law, as well as an interdisciplinary policy skills course she developed—the Health Policy Practicum. Her current scholarly interests focus on how to advance health equity through a multisector structural reform strategy directed at racial and economic inequities; and how to develop health policy from a therapeutic, evidence-informed, and ethical perspective. Dean Campbell serves on the Founding Board of the International Society for Therapeutic Jurisprudence and was recently named to the Board of the Integritas Institute for Ethics at UIC. She was also chosen as one of sixteen fellows in the University of Illinois System’s Presidential Executive Leadership Program.

She is past member of the International Scientific Committee of the International Academy of Law & Mental Health, where she co-organized international panels of therapeutic jurisprudence scholars for the leading law and mental health biennial conference. Dean Campbell received her law degree from Yale Law School, her Masters in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania, and her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame.

Pronouns: She/her/hers

Tsehaye G. Hébert, MFAW (she/her/hers) is a citizen playwright (Alliance Kendeda National Graduate Playwright Award; American College Theatre Festival; Voices Rising Fellow, Vermont Studio Center; The Guild Literary Complex, 30 Writers to Watch; Midwest Black Playwrights Project; Native Voices and Visions; RhinoFest; Cultural DC/SourceFest, Frank McCourt Memoir, Sundance Theatre Lab, finalists).

Hébert’s passion about accessibility, equity and inclusion in the arts led her to ADA 25 Advancing Leadership first as a Fellow, a program committee member and now as an ambassador. She is a current steering committee member of the Chicago Cultural Accessibility Consortium. The cultural architect volunteers with the theatre community and is currently the lead in an Interprofessional Project Program on Inclusive Theatre with Illinois Tech (IIT). She sits on the honorary board of the Piven Theatre Company, and previously volunteered with Pegasus Theatre, Young Playwrights Festival and others.

Her writing employs community dramaturgy, from page to stage. Hébert's work reflects an American Theatre, an African-American cultural landscape and an aesthetic that engages accessibility/inclusivity at concept, rather than as an afterthought. Work by Illinois Laureate Sculptor Preston Jackson, inspired the 2020 3Arts Residency Fellow (University of IL Chicago Circle Campus), to explore how Black American Sign Language, non-verbal communication and inclusivity are expressed through African-American popular culture’s funk music and Jackson's sculpture. "From the Cotton Fields to the Battlefields".

Hébert is Northwestern alum, who earned the MFAW at School of the Art Institute; and New England College (Creative Placemaking, 2022)

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Benro Ogunyipe served as president, vice president, and chair of the board of National Black Deaf Advocates, Inc for six years. He is the author of Black Deaf Culture Through Lens of History, an article commentary on the history, culture, and education of Black Deaf People. He also writes stories, accomplishments, and recognition of the Black Deaf Community for the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) Learning Center of accessibility information supported by the U.S. Department of Education.

Benro is the current Executive Director of the Illinois Deaf and Hard of Hearing Commission. He previously worked for the Illinois Department of Human Services as Senior Accessibility Specialist, Reasonable Accommodation Specialist, and Investigator of the ADA/Section 504 Discrimination Complaints for 17 years. In 2014 and again in 2016, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed Benro to the National Council on Disability. Benro was also appointed by three different Illinois Governors to public bodies and was an appointed board member of the National Association of the Deaf.

Benro received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Gallaudet University and a Master of Public Administration (M.P.A.) degree from DePaul University, School of Public Service.

Pronouns: He/Him/His

For many years, China has been the leading exporter of international students to the United States. Data from the Institute of International Education indicates that there were over 369,000 Chinese students studying in US colleges and

universities in the 2018–2019 academic year. This presentation pays attention to a subgroup among the Chinese students studying in the United States: those

with disabilities. Disability serves as a factor pushing Chinese students with disabilities to go abroad for their higher education. Drawing qualitative data from blogs, personal narratives, news coverage, along with literature on international education and inclusive higher education, this presentation examines the motivations and experiences of Chinese disabled students studying in the US.

_______

Luanjiao Aggie Hu is a PhD Candidate in International Education Policy program from University of Maryland, College Park.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

While Type 1 Diabetes does not define me, it has greatly impacted many aspects of my professional and personal life. Type 1 Diabetes has been a companion in my life for over 23 years. Diagnosed at the age of 12, when I was still growing and maturing as a young person, I was required to identify how this lifelong health condition would be a daily element in my life. My professional experiences in managing diabetes camp, being an advocate for mental health, and researching diabetes camp staff have allowed me opportunities to live joyfully with Type 1 Diabetes and have given me strength and resources in the challenging moments of living with a chronic health condition.

_______

Katie is a strong advocate for diabetes education, mental health, and experiential education through outdoor experiences. Katie has lived joyfully with Type 1 Diabetes for 23 years.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Community Park Districts are shared resources which should be accessible to all members of the community they serve. However, Policies, resources and physical features of Park District facilities can create, and maintain systemic barriers that marginalize minority populations. This research seeks to address barrier removal priorities using tools, programs and policies that liberate and include people with disabilites from minority community groups.

_______

Michael has served as Director of New Star Services in community Therapeutic Recreation since 2003, and taught the TR curriculum at Chicago State University since 2012. He has worked to bring new community inclusive resources to the Maywood Park District.

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Unfortunately for people with disabilities and pre-existing health conditions in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has life-threatening implications that are exacerbated by current triage protocols for resource rationing. Because of the shortage of medical equipment during the pandemic, such as ventilators and even hospital beds, triage guidelines have emerged that seek to justify prioritizing saving some lives over others. In this essay, I examine how disability has come to be rhetorically constructed as abject, invisible, disposable, less than human, etc. within dominant cultural discourses. I will demonstrate how these representations have become so ubiquitous and pervasive within dominant culture that they have the ability to inform the identity and the fate of real people with disabilities – specifically during the the COVID-19 pandemic. I will ultimately argue that triage protocols implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic unjustly discriminate against people with disabilities through their dependence on ableist rhetoric that constructs disability as inherently negative and disabled lives as not worth living.

_______

Ashley is a PhD student in the department of Disability Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests are in the rhetorics of disability and diagnosis.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

This paper focuses on contemporary non-fictional narratives on aphasia and uses the lens of philosophical concept of epistemic justice to problematize one of the aims of those narratives. In the field of disability rights movement and disability studies a practice of storytelling is often interpreted as an emancipatory tool that facilitates not only representation of experiences of disability and the position of disabled body in the public sphere, but also production of new knowledge on disability, created “from below”, i.e., knowledge that is not imposed on disability by medical discourse, sociology or any other dominant discourse or paradigm of knowledge, but created and presented by people with disabilities themselves. The concept of epistemic justice refers to the human right to voice our own experiences and be included in various practices of knowledge production. Narratives of aphasia show how alternative process of knowledge production emerges from the experience of brain damage and intellectual disability. The subject of this narratives usually loses some of his/her cognitive abilities, acquired before the brain damage. Storytelling helps restore those lost abilities, but usually require specific epistemic creativity, e.g., creating an alternative semiotic system in order to communicate with other people and at the same time to prevent epistemic exclusion. This presentation includes narratives of the following writers: S. Beckett, K. Wiktor, and J.B. Taylor.

_______

PhD candidate at the Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland), at the Department of Anthropology of Literature and Cultural Studies. Author of the book “Poiesis of Experience, Poiesis of Identity. Narrations on Aphasia” (2019). Fulbright Junior Research Award 2020–2021 at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Research interests: critical disability studies, literary criticism, theory of literature and modern Polish literature.

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

My research explores how Covid-19 has shaped understandings of mental health in the workplace during the pandemic. While taking fieldnotes on interviews for a previous project I noticed two patterns. Covid-19 is shaping the work environment in multiple ways. It is leading to a change in both the physical environment (telework, accommodations, etc.), but also the social environment (co-worker relationships, and communication) and making the way that we react to disability or understand it different. Covid-19 complicates things as well as the riots, protests, and overall political climate, affected employee experiences both in and outside of the workplace. And this environmental stress has shone a spotlight on mental health in a new way that has not happened before. It forces us to acknowledge the very realness of mental health disabilities within the workforce and the universal experience of stress and mental health during the pandemic. Employers and employees are thinking about mental health more often. This is apparent from the interviewees’ accounts, as well as companies’ Covid-19 resources and policies. So, what does this mean for people with mental health disabilities going forward? And, how might the pandemic be an opportunity for change both inside the workplace and outside it?

_______

Madeline is a senior Anthropology student at UIC minoring in Disability and Human Development. In their free time, they enjoy running with their dog Chase, writing, and cooking.

Pronouns: They/Them/Theirs