TANYA TITCHKOSKY, Ph. D. (York)
Associate Professorand Graduate Coordinator
email:
phone: 416-978-0451
fax: 416.926.4751
room: OISE/UT 12-236
Tanya Titchkosky pursues research and teaching in Disability Studies (DS). She does this work from her perspective as dyslexic and with an interpretive sociological approach informed by phenomenology; hermeneutics; critical disability, race, and queer theory. Along with being a full member of School of Graduate Studies (SGS), and part of the Women and Gender Studies Institute, U of T, she is also an Honorary Research Associate at the University of New Brunswick.
Another Profile can be found at:
Courses taught include “Doing Disability in Theory and Everyday Life.” SES1957; Advanced Disability Studies: Transgressive Bodies / Transgressive Methods.” SES3929; “Special Topics in Sociological Theory in Education such as: “Social Theory and the Body” ; Social Conceptions of Disability; Disability and Culture; Feminist and Phenomenological Theories of the Suffering Body; Interpretive Methods in Disability Studies; Sociology of Emotions; of Mind; of Illness. In 2010, she is launching a new course, “Disability Studies in Education: K-12” for the OISE/UT Initial Teacher Education program.
All of these disability studies courses explore the social meaning of embodiment as it is made manifest between people situated in world orders not of our own choosing. Disability studies is then regarded as a realm of critical inquiry where the meaning of our intersecting lives as bodies, minds, senses, emotions within complex webs of power and interpretations of normalcy can be explored and understood in new ways.
Through both teaching and research, Tanya aims to examine how everyday life and social theory exclude and include disability within the politically charged interpretive milieu of social differences and desires, conflicts and commitments. As Principal Investigator of a standard SSHRC research grant, “The Cultural Production of Disability as an Excludable Type in University Life,” with co-investigator Dr. Rod Michalko, she is examining the ways in which educational contexts continue to include disability as an excludable type and how this relation is represented by images, texts, policy and programs that aim to fix and include disability within educational contexts.
Titchkosky’s current book project, To Pee or Not to Pee: Disability and the Question of Access,, includes an analysis of university access issues as these release conceptions of bodies in social space reflecting taken for granted understandings of the meaning of persons. This book project includes an analysis of the ways in which icons of access serve as symptoms of exclusion, as signs of possible inclusion, and also as a nexus of desire where self and other collide in provocative ways. Washroom battles, access signs, official policy and more everyday statements regarding inclusion are exploredfor how “access” debates organize consciousness providing ways of perceiving who belongs and where. An analysis of access fights as a space of questions reveals how people are constituted as problems and how the making of the meaning of persons is tied to governing powers of expert knowledge regimes.
n relation to disability studies, critical race and queer theory, Tanya is concerned to map the ways the body/disability makes an appearance. Moreover, theorizing what these appearances mean and do may lead to a more complex understanding of systems of domination as well as the awakening of imaginative alternatives.
Scroll down for a fuller list of publications and some links.
All this Disability Studies research, activism and scholarship happens in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education(SESE). In SESE, there are a number of adynamic and supportivethesis student groups, one of which is theDoing Disability Differently Graduate Research, Reading and Activist Group, where we explore social theory and political practice together as a way to address disability issues within a variety of realms of personal, professional and political interests. In the last few years, this group, in partnership with U of T’s, New College’s Disability Studies Speaker Series, has held Student and Faculty Research Symposiums attended by many scholars, activists, and artists including Nancy Hansen, Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Eli Clare. We also hosted and participated in a faculty and student research symposium, “Let's Do Disability Differently: Bringing Bodies into Conversation in Research and Activism.” A similar Research Symposium will occur in 2010. In October, 2008 with New College, U of T, Disability Studies Speakers Series, we helped host Lynn Manning, award winning poet, playwright, and performer to perform his play, “Weights,” link to full-sized PDF poster
Stay tuned for more events. To receive information or join the New College, Disability Studies Speaker Series Network, contact
Books
Tanya’s latest book:
Reading and writing disability differently:the textured life of embodiment 2007 (Reprint 2009) - 250 pages
To listen to an audio interview with Tanya about disability studies and her most recent book, listen to VoicePrint: Canada’s Broadcasting Reading Service, “Contact” program…
Tanya’s first book, Disability, Self and Society (University of Toronto Press, 2003) intertwines social theory and lived experience.
Disability, self, and society
Just released is a newedited collection, Rethinking Normacly: A Disability Studies Reader, (2009)with Co-Author and Editor Rod Michalko
Catalogues :: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.
From the back cover: Rethinking Normalcy introduces the growing field of disability studies to any audience in a variety of disciplines and programs based in the social sciences, humanities, and health sciences. The authors articulate the depth and breadth of this newly emerging field of study and provide a vibrant foretaste of the kind of work disability studies scholars and activists do to provocatively question the power of normalcy. Strongly interdisciplinary, this volume draws upon many different social and cultural approaches to the study of disability, and essentially addresses disability as a social and political issue.
The chapters in this book exemplify ways of questioning our collective relations to normalcy, as such relations affect the lives of both disabled and currently non-disabled people.Over sixty per cent of this book features the work of disability studies scholars located in Canada. These contributors include Vera Chouinard, Tanis Doe, Parin Dossa, Diane Driedger, Nancy Hansen, Esther Ignagni, Barbara Ladouceur, Claudia Malacrida, Charles Miller, James Overboe, Wendy Porch, Carla Rice, and Hilde Zitzelsberger.
Other books with chapters by Tanya Titchkosky
Disability & the politics of education: an international reader - Page 337
by Susan L. Gabel, Scot Danforth, Len (FRW) Barton - Education - 2008 - 667 pagesCHAPTER 19 "I Got Trouble WITH My Reading": An Emerging Literacy…
one of my most powerful assumptions about being literate is my confidence ...
The Anguish of Power: Remapping Mental Diversity with an Anticolonial Compass with Katie Aubrecht in Arlo Kemp (Ed),
Breaching the Colonial Contract
/Disability/postmodernity: embodying disability theory -101
by Mairian Corker, Tom Shakespeare - Social Science - 2002 - 249 pages2002. “Cultural Maps: Which Way to Disability?” London: Continuum
(formerly Cassell). 101-111.
/
Bodies in commotion: disability & performance - Page 219
by Carrie Sandahl, Philip Auslander - Performing Arts - 2005 - 339 pages“Acting Blind: A Revelation of Culture’s Eye” Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 346-363.
*Awarded Best Book Prize for 2006 from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.
/
Embodied rhetorics: disability in language and culture - Page 200
by Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and James Wilson - Social Science - 2001 - 270 pagesPutting Disability in its Place: It's Not a Joking Matter by Rod Michalko and Tanya Titchkosky
The story reveals the meaning of what otherwise would remain an unbearable sequence of ...
Some Other Publications Include:
2009.“Disability Images and The Art of Theorizing Normality,” in special issue of International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Guest Editor Leslie Roman. Vol. 22(1): 75-84.
2008a. “To Pee or Not to Pee?” Ordinary Talk about Extraordinary Exclusions in a University EnvironmentTanya Titchkosky, 2008 Vol 33(1) Canadian Journal of Sociology.
2008b. “‘I got problems with my reading’: An Emerging Literacy,” in Gabel, S. L., & Danforth, S. (Eds., ).Disability and the Politics of Education: An InternationalReader.New York: Peter Lang. 337-352.
2008c.“The Contested Space of the Body in the Academy,” with Susan Ferguson in Whose University Is It, Anyway? Anne Wagner, Sandra Acker and Kimine Mayuzumi (Eds.). Toronto: Sumach Press. 61-76.
2007.“Ordering Choice: Women, Disability and Medical Discourse" in Ed Ksenych, and David Liu, Eds., The Pleasure of Inquiry: Readings in Sociology. Toronto:Thomson Nelson. 323-400.
2007.“Pausing at the Intersections of Difference,” Guest writer for Exploring Genderin Canada: A Multi-Dimensional Approach, Beverly Matthews and Lori G.
Beaman, (Eds.) Toronto: Pearson. 135-137.
2006.“Policy, Disability, Reciprocity?” in Disability and Social Policy in Canada(2nd ed.).Ed. Mary Ann McColl and Lyn Jongbloed, Toronto: Captus Press. 54-72.
2005.“Disability in the News: A Reconsideration of Reading,” Disability & Society. Vol. 20(6) October: 653-666.
2005.“Clenched Subjectivity: Disability, Women and Medical Discourse” Disability Studies Quarterly.Special issue on disability studies and technology, Eds., Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell. Vol. 25(3):
2003.“Governing Embodiment: Technologies of Constituting Citizens with Disabilities.” Canadian Journal of Sociology.Vol. 28 (4): 517-542.
2002. “Cultural Maps: Which Way to Disability?” Eds. Marian Corker and Tom Shakespeare, Disability and Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory.London: Continuum (formerly Cassell). 101-111.
2001.“Putting Disability in its Place: It’s Not a Joking Matter,”co-authored with Dr. R. Michalko, in eds. James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture. CarbondaleIL : Southern IllinoisUniversity Press. 200-(213-224 are solely my authorship.)
2001. “Coming Out Disabled: The Politics of Understanding.”Disability Studies Quarterly. Fall: Vol. 21:4: 131-139. or
2001.“Disability - A Rose By Any Other Name? People-First Language in Canadian Society.”Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. Vol.38:2, 125- 140.
2000. “Disability Studies: The New and The Old.” Canadian Journal of Sociology. Vol.25(2):197 - 224.
1998. “Anorexia, Women, and Change,” in Journal of Dharma. Vol. XXIII (4): 479-500.
Work in Progress Includes:
“Disability Narratives: Rethinking the Human” guest address for the New York Humanities and Arts Lecture Series
Disability Studies Quarterly special submission, “The Disorienting Orientation of Disability Studies” with Eiza Chandler, Isaac Stein, Rod Michalko.
“There and Not There: The Presence and Absence of Disability in the Transition from Education to Work.” with Rod Michalko submitted to Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work: Reflections on Policy and Practice.Eds. Peter Sawchuk and Alison Taylor.
Ongoing Externally-Awarded Research Funding
2009.Principal Investigator for a Standard SSHRC Grant for the study of “The Cultural Production of Disability as an Excludable Type in University Life,” with
co-investigator, Dr. Rod Michalko. [#410-2009-2539].
2008.Principal Investigator for a Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) grant for the study of “Representations of Disability in University
Curriculum in Ontario” {Research Report Available}
2006-09.Principal Investigator for a Standard SSHRC Grant for the study of “Organizing Disablement: The University and Disability Experience,” with co-investigator, Dr. Rod Michalko. [#410-2006-2132]
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