Associate Professor Anne McGuire Awarded Arts & Science Teaching and Learning Fellowship to Launch Disability Justice Course
Associate Professor and Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity Program Director, Anne McGuire. Image Credit: Supplied
New College would like to congratulate Associate Professor, Teaching Stream Anne McGuire, Director of the Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity program (CSES), on receiving the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts & Science Teaching and Learning Fellowship as part of the 2024 Arts & Science Outstanding Achievement Awards.
This fellowship provides instructors with an opportunity to design or redevelop an in-person, online or hybrid course. Fellows will receive funding and support from the Arts & Science Teaching and Learning team to help bring their vision to life, offering inspiration and innovative models for other faculty and the broader Arts & Science and U of T community.
Professor Anne McGuire, a scholar in Critical Disability Studies and affiliate faculty with the Center for Global Disability Studies, draws on interpretive perspectives in critical disability studies, crip theory, cultural studies, and anti-racist and de/anticolonial frameworks. Her research positions disability as a meaningful category that serves as a foundation for cultural analysis and transformative social critique. She is the author of War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence (University of Michigan Press, 2016), which received the 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities, and her upcoming book, A Broken Politics for a Disabled World (University of Minnesota Press) explores disability cultural knowledge practices centred on repair, maintenance, and care. Committed to public pedagogy and creative knowledge mobilization, Professor McGuire is also the co-author of the award-winning disability justice children’s book, We Move Together (AK Press, 2021) and its book’s accompanying K-12 curriculum, which introduces school-aged children to disability culture, community, and accessibility. Her dedication to promoting and enhancing accessibility in education has been recognized by New College’s June Larkin Award for Pedagogical Development and the University of Toronto’s Early Career Teaching.
With the fellowship, Professor McGuire will be developing a new course called Beyond Compliance: Embracing Disability Cultures of Access and Justice which will be a capstone within the Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity program. This course will centre on disability cultural knowledge, justice, and creative approaches to accessibility. Students will explore diverse perspectives on accessibility and have the opportunity to acquire transferable skills in ‘access skills labs’ such as captioning, audio-description, tagging PDF documents and accessible event planning to make communities inclusive. Grounded in disability cultural wisdom, critical theories of disability and access, and principles of disability justice, Professor McGuire says, “this course treats access as more than a standard or regulation that requires compliance, but rather as an ongoing, responsive, and creative commitment to justice and our shared need to be and more together. Together, we will tinker, try, re-make, create, and collaborate our way to more accessible, just futures.”
The creation of Beyond Compliance recognizes that accessibility cannot be achieved through legislation alone, and despite advancements such as the Accessible Canada Act and Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), disabled people continue to face systemic barriers and discrimination.
Professor McGuire emphasizes that when accessibility laws are detached from the histories of disability oppression and resistance, they risk overlooking the transformative potential of disability culture, “accessibility is more than a mere checklist item–it is a political stance and a practice essential for inclusivity and justice. How we build our worlds–how we plan cities, maintain infrastructure, organize events, design courses, etc.–tells a story of belonging and justice. This is a story about who and what matters in the spaces we share…Beyond Compliance is equipping students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills to move beyond the checklist approach, thereby fostering the meaningful and just inclusion of disabled people as an equity-deserving group.”
Receiving the Arts & Science Teaching and Learning Fellowship reflects Professor McGuire’s ongoing dedication to advancing accessibility and justice in education. New College is excited to see how Beyond Compliance: Embracing Disability Cultures of Access and Justice (launching 2025) will inspire and empower students to share more inclusive communities.
Congratulations, Professor McGuire on this remarkable achievement!