In Memoriam: Dr. Rod Michalko
The New College community mourns the loss of former Professor Rod Michalko. Bringing together voices from across the College, Professor Anne McGuire reflects on his lasting contributions to scholarship, teaching and mentorship:
Dear members of the New College community,
Photo Credit: Supplied
It is with deep sadness that I share the news that former New College Professor and leading disability studies scholar Rod Michalko passed away on Friday, August 14, 2026.
Rod was a powerful and generous presence at New College whose intellectual leadership, teaching, scholarship, humour, and care have shaped, and continue to shape, Disability Studies at New College and across the University of Toronto.
Rod’s arrival in the Equity Studies Program in 2007 marked a pivotal moment in the development of disability studies at U of T. Building on foundations established through the Disability Studies Network in the early 2000s, he developed what became the University’s first undergraduate stream in Disability Studies. During his time at New College, Rod designed and launched the seminal Introduction to Disability Studies course and developed several courses that remain central to the Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity curriculum today, including Equity and the Body (now CSE344: Body Matters), Disability and Representation (now CSE348: Disability Arts and Culture), and CSE439 Contemporary Theories in Disability Studies. The comprehensive Disability Studies stream that now spans the undergraduate years stands as a lasting testament to his influence as a teacher, scholar, dreamer and builder.
Photo Credit: Supplied
An award-winning teacher and internationally recognized scholar, Rod transformed how generations of students, researchers, and activists understand disability, embodiment, difference, and blindness. His influential books, including The Mystery of the Eye and the Shadow of Blindness (1998), The Two-in-One: Walking with Smokie, Walking with Blindness (1999), and The Difference That Disability Makes (2002), helped shape the field of disability studies. More recently, works such as Things Are Different Here (2017) and Letters with Smokie (2023) continued his lifelong commitment to exploring disability as a relational, creative, and generative way of moving through the world.
Rod’s influence extended far beyond the classroom. Alongside colleagues including Professors, Tanya Titchkosky and June Larkin, he built a vibrant disability studies community at New College. Through the Disability Studies Speaker Series – now running for more than 20 years – and countless acts of mentorship, collaboration, and community-building, he created spaces where students, scholars, artists, and activists could gather to think, learn, and imagine together. His dedication to fostering disability-centered and accessible classrooms was recognized in 2010 with the Arts & Science Students’ Union (ASSU) Terry Buckland Award for Diversity and Equity in Education. The thriving disability culture and intellectual community that continue at New College today owe much to his vision.
As news of Rod’s passing spread, colleagues and former students reflected on his extraordinary impact:
“Rod was one of the first colleagues I met when I started my term as Principal. I will always remember this meeting, in his Wilson Hall office. He was welcoming, warm, funny, positive and I could feel that he was able to sense one’s personality in a deep way. Of course, Rod was above all a committed and convincing advocate for the field of Disability Studies. A big loss, but his positive impact on so many will be remembered for a long time.”
– Yves Roberge, New College Principal (2010-2017)
“Rod’s passing is a profound loss to the Disability Studies communities he was so pivotal in building at the University of Toronto and beyond. In Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity, his legacy will live on through his achievement in establishing the Disability Studies stream as a high-profile, signature initiative within the program. Former CSES students speak movingly of the tremendous impact of Rod’s groundbreaking scholarship, award-winning teaching and generous mentorship on their academic journeys. He showed up for students, unconditionally, offering support through encouragement, humour and compassion. As a colleague, Rod taught me to think about disability differently, to understand teaching as a relational practice, and to appreciate what it means to create a thriving intellectual community. His enormous contributions will continue to enrich and inspire our CSES community for years to come.”
– June Larkin, Founding Director, Equity Studies
“I first encountered Dr. Rod Michalko as an undergraduate student. He was my introduction to Disability Studies… Enrolling in his course marked a pivotal turning point in my intellectual, personal and professional trajectory. Before I met Rod, I had never understood ‘the body’ outside of the medical model… His mentorship extended beyond critique; it cultivated intellectual courage. Rod’s encouragement, allyship, insight, and writing will live on for generations, having impacted so many people and students throughout his life.”
– Tania Ruiz Chapman, Equity Studies alumna and former (CSES instructor (CSE439: Disability at the Border)
“Each year as I prepare my syllabus, I am reminded of Rod’s provocation to encounter theory as a place of wonder… I know he will be guiding us to keep wondering with disability as our teacher. Thank you, Rod, for continuing to gift our community with your creativity, your provocations to rethink disability difference, and your commitment to reimagining how we come together with love and care through our everyday acts of teaching and learning.”
– Miguel Esteban, Instructor (CSE348: Disability Arts and Culture)
“I first met Dr. Michalko in 2007 when I enrolled in my very first Disability Studies course at New College as a Black student newly diagnosed with a learning disability. Navigating stigma, institutional barriers, and the weight of racialized and ableist assumptions, I often felt out of place in the academy. Rod’s classroom was the first space where I felt seen, intellectually engaged, and capable of thriving. He created an inclusive environment where all students, especially those pushed to the margins, could participate fully and imagine themselves differently. His mentorship was patient, generous, and deeply human; he always showed up, whether I was struggling with an academic challenge or the emotional weight of navigating university structures. Rod transformed how I understood disability, Blackness, race, and institutional power, teaching me that ‘problem people’ are produced through power, social norms, and histories rather than inherent shortcomings […] His guidance set the foundation for my academic life, inspiring my ongoing commitment to creating accessible, critically engaged learning environments for Black disabled students.”
– Dr. Leroy Baker, Queen’s University, Postdoctoral Researcher, Equity Studies and TYP Alumni
“Rod was such a powerful storyteller both in person and on the page. These stories talked about big structural realities through small but important moments. And he had such a lovely sense of humour. I was always so pleased to run into him on campus or at disability studies events. He always made me laugh and think.”
–Dr. Loree Erickson, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, CSES
“Rod changed the way I see, both literally and figuratively, and helped me understand sight as a culture and a construct that I participate in performing. As I move through the world, I no longer just see whatever I think is there; I also see myself and others seeing and performing sight, and in this way, I carry a version of Rod with me wherever I go.”
–Dr. Efrat Gold New College Affiliate Scholar
“Kin takes many forms. I knew and loved Rod as both an unofficial mentee but also as a proud member of the CSES and, more broadly, the New College community. Stacey Park Milbern wrote that to leave our ancestors unconsidered is to see only a sliver of who we are, and that ancestorship is not the private property of blood. I have been part of CSE241, or Introduction to Critical Disability Studies, for four years now, and I never forget that Rod first brought this course to the college. Many things have changed over the years; many wonderful people have been part of the course, but what has remained as a lineage are all the things Rod lived by and held dear: a deep sense of community, a willingness to treat dis/ability as a place of wonder rather than a place of truths, a refusal to let the many questions of disability be settled and above all, a generosity beyond words. Every time we discuss a lecture on normalcy, compulsory able-bodiedness, disability visibility or a hundred other topics, Rod’s thoughts and words continue to transform how we think about the world and how to be in it.”
–Aparna Raghu Menon, Co-Instructor (CSE241: Introduction to Critical Disability Studies)
“I cannot fully articulate the extent to which Rod helped me grow as a student and more importantly as a person. He changed the way that we view the world academically and socially and our collective presence in it. I know that during my proudest achievements and the moments of challenge and adversity that I have faced over the years Rod unfailingly supported and encouraged me, acting as a professor, a mentor, but most of all as a friend…Like many of his students, I carry the values that he demonstrated in his pedagogical approach. These values include selflessly mentoring, guiding our careers in education, law, healthcare, and the performing arts, to name but a few. Rod continues to shape the world.”
–Anthony Foster, Janet Lambert Book Prize Winner in Equity Studies, Equity Studies Alumni ‘12
On a personal note, Rod was a dear friend, teacher, and mentor.
Nineteen years ago, I arrived at New College as a brand new PhD student and teaching assistant across Rod’s courses. Although these were, unquestionably, Rod’s courses, shaped by his insight, humour, and intellectual imagination, he generously insisted on describing them as “our” courses. This was because teaching, for Rod, was something done in relation. In class, Rod would encourage me to interrupt his lectures, add a story, pose a question, or offer another perspective. Through that dialogic approach, I came to know teaching not as a solitary performance but a collective practice rooted in conversation and relationship.
And it wasn’t just his TA who he invited to join him as teacher.
Rod was famous for telling students not to raise their hands. If they did, he’d warn, they’d be waiting a long while, as he would not see them. If students wanted to speak, they, too, would have to interrupt. At first, many students were anxious with the flipping of this normative script occasioned by blindness entering the classroom. Over time, however, they would always learn to negotiate access together: interrupting, questioning, sharing stories. Students interacting with each other in a large lecture hall became students turning toward one another as interlocutors and collaborators. Access negotiations gave way to disability cultural formations. Disability culture was not simply something we study; it is something we do – and hold – together.
What gets passed on and inherited through disability is far more complex, expansive, and generative than deficit-based models tell us. Lineage is carried not only through bodies, but through relationships, ways of knowing, modes of teaching, practices of care, political commitments, and shared acts of imagining better futures not just for ourselves but for kin. The CSES community at New College mourns the passing of Rod Michalko, as we continue to teach and learn with the inheritances he has left in our care. The questions he asked, the intellectual and political commitments he modelled, and the generosity with which he engaged students and colleagues endures in our classrooms, our scholarship, and our relationships with one another.
Our hearts are with Rod’s partner of thirty-eight years, Professor Tanya Titchkosky, as well as his family, friends, colleagues, students, and all those whose lives were touched by his generosity, mentorship, and scholarship.
We will share details of a celebration of Rod’s life as they become available.
For those who wish to leave condolences, stories, or memories, please visit Messages for Rod Michalko
Anne McGuire
Professor and Director
Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity
New College, University of Toronto
To learn more about Dr. Rod Michalko work, please visit Champion of Accessibility: Professor Rod Michalko works to eradicate prejudices associated with being disabled, originally published by U of T Magazine, 2009.