Disability Justice: Rethinking “Inclusion” in Arts Education Research

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Notes

¹ The AERI—founded in 2014 by visual art education scholars at universities throughout the United States who wanted to develop a vibrant research culture in the field of art education—is an “autonomous, virtual institute” that holds an annual symposium to support “critical, systematic, empirical, and theoretical research and scholarship that addresses key intellectual and practical issues in the field of art education” (AERI, 2014–2018, para. 1 & 3). See www.aerinstitute.org.

² Terminology is important in the representation of disability. Therefore, we seriously consider the use of both forms of identification (disabled people or people with disabilities). We also respect that the American Psychological Association (APA) recommends the latter term (APA, 2010). However, since the disability rights movement, the term disabled people often has been used by disability studies scholars and disabled artists precisely because of the awkwardness and distracting nature of the “person-first” term and the negative connotation of separating disability from the identity of the person (Derby, 2011, p. 111).

³ In this commentary, we use the concept entangled to emphasize messy, fluid, nonstatic relationships formed in specific contexts. For example, a person in some contexts may be identified by society as a person of color but not in other contexts (Blocker, 1999), and/or experience self-identity as gender fluid, or nonbinary gender, and even cyborg (Waggoner, 2009).

⁴ Sins Invalid, founded in 2006 and based in San Francisco, has a website with an inclusive definition of disability of those “whose bodies do not conform to our culture(s)’ notions of ‘normal’ or ‘functional,’” as well as arts educational resources and performance videos at www.sinsinvalid.org (Sins Invalid, n.d., para. 2). Littleglobe Disability Justice Collective, founded in 2013 and based in New Mexico, has a website that presents current and archived arts-based projects and bios of artists, as well as links to affiliate collectives (see www.littleglobe.org/portfolio/disability-justice-collective). The D.O.P.E. Collective, founded in 2015 and based in Buffalo, New York, presents inclusion principles with graphics and offers free and accessible art workshops with booking information at their website (see www.dopewny.org).

⁵ AERI responded to the authors’ proposal and added a position statement in 2018 on the AERI website that “AERI is committed to continuous reflection on inclusive practices in the design, implementation, presentation of research, participation in programs, symposia or in the publication and distribution of materials associated with AERI’s mission” (AERI, 2014-2018, para. 2).