“The stadium exploded,” she said in American Sign Language through an interpreter. “The stadium went wild, and everything else just disappeared.” 

Team USA won the match, 4-0, and took home gold – the first of four gold medals that Offreda would win with the , which has Offreda also won gold at the 2013 Deaflympics and at the Deaf World Cup in 2012 and 2016. She officially retired from competitive soccer in 2016.

Offreda was “born with a soccer ball” at her feet and started playing soccer around age 3, she said. Sports have always been a part of her story.

This fall, Offreda joined the œÛŚÓÊÓÆ” & Sciences as an assistant teaching professor in the disability studies program. She currently teaches Introduction to Disability Studies and Deaf Culture and Literature. Next semester, she will be teaching Disability in Sports, which will “challenge traditional narratives of ability” and explore how access and representation transforms communities, she said. 

Prior to Georgetown, Offreda served as the head women’s soccer coach, senior woman administrator and Title IX coordinator for ’s athletic department, as well as an and a middle school English teacher. 

“We are extremely lucky to have Professor Offreda join Georgetown and the disability studies program,” said , who is the director of the program. “She brings a wealth of not only scholarly and lived knowledge, but also leadership.”

Creating an Accessible Space

The disability studies program at Georgetown is one of the first of its kind.

The program was launched in 2017 by English professor and has grown to include a minor, a graduate certificate and now a major. This fall marks the first opportunity for students to declare a major in disability studies. 

In addition to the program, Georgetown’s Disability Cultural Center (DCC) opened on the ground floor of the New South building in 2023, which is an accessible space for disability cultural events and meetings. 

Georgetown’s commitment to the community and investment in disability studies attracted Offreda to the university, she said. 

“I was drawn to the opportunity to contribute to a space where disability is approached as a form of knowledge and culture, not simply as a medical condition,” she said. 

Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field, as much connected to the humanities as it is to sports. The discipline also greatly overlaps with the Jesuit commitment to cura personalis, meaning “care of the whole person,” and faith that does justice, said Reynolds. 

“At the core of disability studies is an appreciation that we are complex, embodied creatures that rely upon one another to flourish,” Reynolds said. “Without education, faith and justice, it’s hard to see how one could flourish. In so many ways, [disability studies] and Georgetown are a perfect fit.”

A Love of Storytelling

Offreda is a storyteller, and she incorporates this love for storytelling into her classes. 

Going from teaching, to coaching and then to working within athletic administration, Offreda sees athletics and teaching as being connected. For Offreda, athletics are simply an extension of the art of storytelling. 

Sports are a “language, a form of expression and an expression of identity,” she said. “When I’m on the field, when I’m coaching on the field, I feel like I’m bringing my true self.” 

Offreda’s father was born in Italy and introduced soccer to her at a young age. He told that he saw her potential in the sport by the time Offreda was 5 or 6 years old.

“The way she ran, the way she moved, anybody that knew soccer, you could tell, she had the potential to be something, to be somebody,” he said.

Soccer allowed Offreda to travel internationally, and in 2016, Offreda was named one of the top deaf soccer players in the world. She was “thrilled,” but the moment was bittersweet, as she knew she was about to retire. When she got the news, the first thing she thought about was her gratitude for the people she had met on her athletic journey. She also thought of her dad, who taught Offreda “so much about resilience and never giving up.”

Offreda encourages students to consider the power of narrative and how language shapes our understanding of the world and of each other. In her classes, students explore the narratives and perspectives of people who have disabilities and come from a wide range of backgrounds. 

Her students consider how their definition of disability changes over time, and many credit these narratives for expanding and shifting their perspective. Storytelling becomes a way to “redefine disability,” Offreda said. She believes sharing stories is a way of bridging the gap to understanding. 

It connects people and brings them together, Offreda said.

The comes after years of advocacy from students, faculty, staff and community members, and Georgetown will be one of the few top-ranked universities in the country to offer an undergraduate major program dedicated to disability studies. 

Having a disability studies major – on top of the existing minor and programs – fits into Georgetown’s mission and the Jesuit concept of cura personalis, says , the director of the Disability Studies Program and an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy. 

“It fits into our commitment to understand what it means to be human along the many dimensions of life that present themselves,” Reynolds says. “Disability will always be a central feature of human life, and its study is something that benefits everyone.”

Inherently Interdisciplinary

Most people will experience disability at some point in their lives, says , a teaching professor in the Department of English and the founding director of the Disability Studies Program. 

Disabled people are the largest minority group in the United States, and according to the , more than 1 in 4 adults in the country have some type of disability. Nearly 14% of degree-seeking undergraduate Georgetown students identified as someone with a disability (mental, physical or other) in the university’s first in 2020. 

Disability studies is an inherently broad and interdisciplinary field.

“It’s extraordinarily relevant for students entering into a range of professions,” Rifkin says.

The Disability Studies Program at Georgetown is designed to be flexible and fit with students who are doing another major. It allows students to choose their own path, Reynolds says. The program currently has core and affiliate faculty members and courses in a wide variety of departments, including biology, psychology, philosophy, music, theology, anthropology, medicine, sociology and English. 

“Having knowledge about disability immediately puts you in a better position than the person next to you who doesn’t have that knowledge,” Reynolds says. “This is one of those sorts of fields of study where it gives you an immediate edge.”

All of the students will complete either a theoretical or practical senior capstone project, says , a professor in the Department of Philosophy who served as director of the Disability Studies Program from 2022 to 2024. The former will be a traditional, standard thesis that involves a research project, and the latter is a community based learning project, like an internship. 

“That gives people a ton of flexibility as to what they do with that final project, and it can also – depending on what their career plans are – be a really good stepping stone,” Kukla says.

And while there are no formalized tracks within the major, there are informal pathways, including for students interested in law and policy, pre-medicine and arts and humanities. 

“Students who major in this come out with such a deep appreciation of the complexity of embodiment and of social and political norms and practices,” Reynolds says. “That is very useful to be a human, to live a life out into the world and hopefully, in the end, try and make the world a better place.”

‘Students Were Hungry for This’

Starting in 2017, Georgetown students have been able to , but students have expressed interest in studying the field long before that.

“I started teaching courses in disability studies as freshman writing seminars, probably as far back as 2008 and really got the sense that Georgetown students were hungry for this,” Rifkin says.

Rifkin, who served as the program director from 2017 until 2020, began to find other faculty members who wanted to teach courses in disability studies, pulling together colleagues in theater and performance studies, anthropology and health sciences. In 2014, they assembled a cluster of classes tied together by a series of events and speakers. 

“We started to develop an audience and community for this work,” Rifkin says. 

That led to finding other faculty members who were interested in or already teaching disability material in their courses, and from there, a cohort formed that worked on launching a disability studies minor. The proposal for that went through in April of 2017 and the minor program started in the fall of that year, according to Rifkin. The M.A./Ph.D. certificate was approved in 2020.

Dominic DeRamo (C’23) graduated from Georgetown in 2023 with a double major in government and philosophy and a minor in disability studies. For the past year, he has been working as a development associate at Disability Rights Fund (DRF). The organization provides funding, peer and collective learning and advocacy support to organizations of persons with disabilities in the Global South. 

“I am constantly applying lessons from my disability studies minor,” DeRamo says. “My minor helps me contextualize DRF’s efforts in global disability movements and apply critical frameworks, especially as they relate to intersectionality.”

DeRamo says he would have “absolutely” declared a major in disability studies if it were offered while he was a student. 

“The Disability Studies Program was so important to understanding my own disability identity,” he says. 

Making It a Major

Georgetown students have been a driving force in making the new major a reality. As soon as there was a minor, there was talk about starting a major. 

“The students really initiated that conversation,” says , a professor of English and core faculty in disability studies. “They were so excited by the work they were doing in the minor and saw direct connections to their career paths.” 

Fink also served as the director of the program after Rifkin. When she was director during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fink and other faculty members started thinking about what a disability studies major at Georgetown would look like. 

A formal proposal was drafted under the guidance of Kukla. The final version of the proposal was revised and submitted by Reynolds in 2024 after they became director, and it was approved in early 2025. 

Having a major program allows students to engage more deeply with disability studies than with a minor. It will also help with research possibilities.

“It allows for both more depth and breadth,” Fink says. “You can take more diverse classes, just because they’re more of them, and then research a specific area more deeply.”

Lauren Santoro (C’26) did not know that Georgetown had a Disability Studies Program until she took the Disability, Culture, and the Question of Care First-Year Seminar with Rifkin. But once she did, Santoro knew that she would declare disability studies as a minor as soon as she could, adding it to her other minor in English and major in psychology.

Now, Santoro plans to convert her disability studies minor to a double major with psychology. Santoro says that learning about disabilities in an academic setting has helped her take pride in her identity as a disabled person.

“Going through high school and having chronic illness and disability was really difficult,” Santoro says. “So going into a class where it was kind of like, hey, being disabled isn’t a bad thing 
 it just felt like I found more of a purpose, and that suddenly my experiences weren’t this tragic story.”

Performed in Paris, France by Fink and eight co-performers, the piece took inspiration from Paris green, an emerald-green pigment used to color women’s clothing, home textiles, wallpaper and more in the late 19th century. Paris green was notably used in paintings by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and their contemporaries. Underpinning its striking beauty, however, was a deadly ingredient, arsenic, which led to deleterious effects on women seeking to sport the latest in fashion.  

“Researching Paris green brought us to thinking more rigorously and creatively about the toxic nature of our current clothing: in its manufacture, wearing  and disposal — and its links to noxious ideas about women and beauty,” said Fink, a professor in the and a core faculty member in the . “It only made sense to perform this in Paris, the source of Paris green, the center of fast and high fashion and of many faux green initiatives.”

For Laffin, a frequent collaborator with Fink, the piece was rooted in a deeply personal experience. While developing an anti-war piece in 2004, Laffin handled more than 40 military blankets, which exposed her to chemicals that have had a lasting impact on her quality of life. 

“Professor Fink and I met in grad school and started a feminist performance collective; our early performances were centered around this project.,” said Laffin. “Later our personal experiences around disability brought us back together, not just in terms of our personal friendship, but because of our shared vision for a healthier and more sustainable environment.”

Building on this personal experience, the piece interrogated notions of greenwashing, a tactic used by the fashion industry to mask toxic, unsustainable practices with the language of environmentalism. 

“Clothing is entirely unregulated in its marketing,” said Fink. “You can literally call arsenic green! Our aim was to create a site-specific, kinetic large-scale performance using a 100-foot dress in ways that exposed this greenwashing while creating a beautiful, engaging and playful performance.”

At the Stravinsky Fountain in Paris, Fink donned a 100-foot green dress made with eight strips of sustainable, non-toxic cloth majestically unfurled by eight participants clothed like toxic waste workers.  Fink began the piece by wrapping around her arms 20 scarves made out of the same sustainable, non-toxic green fabric as the eight-piece dress unfurled dramatically behind her. These scarves had questions about greenwashing written on them, which she then gave away to audience members and passersby.

“Clothing is so personal, so intimate, so tied up with our sense of gender, desire, fashion and embodiment,” said Fink. “And everyone has to wear clothes! Yet despite the focus on toxins in the food system, there has been no real public discussion of toxins in clothing and its manufacture — just endless greenwashing.”

This fall, Fink and Laffin are collaborating on a related piece with ClĂ©a Massiani, the duo’s curator and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. The piece, titled “Going (Georgetown) Green”, is sponsored by the , the , the , the , the and the .

“For the upcoming work at Georgetown, the goal is to engage the students in meaningful ways and observe what happens next,” said Laffin. “It would be great if they were inspired to take ownership of the piece and propel it to a brand new place.”

Interested community members can learn more on their website. 

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The volume, which offers a radical re-reading of both the Talmud and the Bible in light of lived disability experience, recently received the Myra H. Kraft Memorial Award in Contemporary Jewish Life from the Jewish Book Council. 

“People often ask me what religious texts say about disability,” said , a rabbi and a professor in the . “This book flips that question on its head and asks: ‘What does disability offer to Jewish tradition, to spiritual life and to the practice of building meaningful community?’”

Moses as Disabled Prophet

“Open the Bible and disability is everywhere,” Watts Belser says. 

One prominent example is the prophet Moses, who describes himself as “slow of speech and tongue”—and who fears that his speech disability will prevent him from carrying out God’s call. But God meets Moses’ access needs. Moses’ brother Aaron stands in as the first “reasonable accommodation” in the Torah, becoming an essential part of the prophet’s communication team. God grants Moses the gift of signs—an invitation to embrace visual language, rather than to rely on words.

God also promises to be with Moses as he speaks. For Watts Belser, this line is not about God fixing Moses’ tongue but relying on it. 

“I hear it as a claim that God’s presence is in the very particulars of Moses’ mouth, in the twists of his tongue, in the physical realities of the body God has formed for him,” wrote Watts Belser. “God has not undone Moses’s disability or erased it. God has promised presence, in and through the very tongue that Moses offers to the world.”

Throughout the book, Watts Belser not only dives into the life of Moses, but an array of foundational stories for Christian and Jewish thought, including the blindness of Isaac, Jacob’s struggle with an angel and the miracles of Jesus. 

The Lessons of Lived Disability Experience

Looking to disability studies and lived disability experience as a source of wisdom is a throughline for Watts Belser’s ongoing academic research. 

“This book aims to recognize disability wisdom as a generative, potent source of spiritual and political insight,” said Watts Belser. 

Watts-Belser recalls a moment in rabbinical school that shifted her perspective on how lived disability experience might inform, rather than be informed by, the religious texts to which she’d devoted her life to study. There is a famous debate in the Talmud about whether it is permissible to soften the truth to spare someone’s feelings.  When one ancient rabbi is asked how to praise a woman on her wedding day, he responds that it’s best to praise everyone in the same way—as “a beautiful and graceful bride.” Another rabbi contends that if the woman is blind or lame, those stock compliments will become lies. 

“The rabbi assumes that her disability makes her undesirable,” said Watts Belser. “It hit me so hard. Not just because that idea gets expressed in a sacred text, but because it remains such a ubiquitous assumption in contemporary culture. It’s a text that helped me realize that I would have to find a different way of reading these stories–one that would shake up those assumptions and showcase the powerful, subversive brilliance of disability culture.”

Lived disability experience is a wellspring of wisdom that not only enriches the realm of theology, but can improve all of our lives. “Ableism hurts all of us,” Watts Belser argues. She sees a powerful connection between the Jewish tradition of Shabbat and the disability community’s radical embrace of rest amidst modernity’s overpowering allegiance to productivity culture. 

“Immersing myself in the rhythms of disability culture, learning from folks with a whole host of disability experiences, including chronic illness, chronic pain and chronic fatigue, helped me recognize the radical edge of rest. So many disabled people experience significant limits to our energy and pace. For me, that has spurred an extraordinary invitation to detox from dominant culture’s claim that our worth is defined by our ability to work.”

“There’s a powerful synergy here with Jewish practice, with the way Shabbat honors and recognizes rest as sacred. It aligns so deeply with a principle that’s at the heart of the disability community — a commitment to honor people not for what we do, but for who we are. To recognize that regardless of whether or not we measure up to capitalism’s metrics, each of our lives have infinite value.” 

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Sekyere-Boateng’s work was fully funded through a Station1 Frontiers Fellowship, a selective program that empowers undergraduates in STEM to gain real-world research experience in socially-directed projects. 

“Receiving the fellowship was exhilarating; it not only felt validating and affirming but also gave me a sense of belonging,” said Sekyere-Boateng, a computer science major and disability studies minor. “It underscored the reality that there’s a longstanding tradition of socially-directed science, and a vibrant community supporting it.”

Empowering Communities with Computers 

Sekyere-Boateng conducted research alongside two other students, an undergraduate from George Mason University and a graduate student from MIT. The group’s objective was to investigate how transformative, technology-based educational experiences can empower marginalized communities. They relied on the Critical Participatory Action Research, or CPAR, a research framework suited for “documenting, challenging and transforming conditions of social injustice.”

“My research stemmed from interrogating how computer science as a discipline is often presented as neutral; however, it is a tool that perpetuates and reifies structural oppression,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “We focused on addressing this issue, particularly how computer science can also be used as a tool to combat structural oppression and empower marginalized communities.”

The group worked out of a computer lab at Camfield Estates, a federally funded voucher co-op in Boston, which has been described as “an oasis in a desert of affordable housing. The community has a long-standing collaboration with MIT.

“The initial phase involved developing a curriculum tailored for participants aged 10-15, which was both accessible and enriching, guided by liberatory computing principles,” explained Sekyere-Boateng. “Liberatory computing illuminates how computing curricula can empower African-American students with skills to address societal racism.”

In their curriculum, the researchers used MIT’s Scratch, a web-based coding community geared towards children, and Google’s CS First, a computer science curriculum for grade school students. The team integrated lessons into a larger project-based learning approach. To judge the efficacy of the curriculum, the research team relied on semi-structured interviews and surveys.

“While imparting programming fundamentals was essential, our primary objective was to instill in participants the understanding that their newfound skills could be leveraged for the betterment of their community,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “The central goal was to show students that they have the power to effect positive change using technology.”

This instruction, all conducted out of the Camfield Estates computer lab, was positively received by the students.

“During our data collection, we observed a notable shift in their perception,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “The students began to recognize that computers and programming could indeed be tools for good, and they felt equipped to harness these tools for community improvement.”

Sekyere-Boateng on the Hilltop

For Sekyere-Boateng, his own interest in technology started at a young age and ultimately set him on the path to Georgetown.

“My current interest in coding can probably be traced back to my days obsessed with online games like Club Penguin and Toontown,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “I was so obsessed that a friend and I set up a website dedicated to Club Penguin – it was a space for mission tutorials, coin hacks, and anything Club Penguin related.” 

Engaging with coding in a fun, lighthearted atmosphere helped Sekyere-Boateng build skills at a young age that would empower him academically and socially for years to come. That kind of transformative experience is what Sekyere-Boateng wants to replicate for students everywhere.

At Georgetown, Sekyere-Boateng has been active both in the classroom and on campus. As an incoming first-year student, Sekyere-Boateng participated in Young Leaders in Education, Advocacy and Dialogue (YLEAD), a pre-orientation program for students interested in diversity and social justice.

“Being a part of YLEAD was transformative,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “It was my first community at Georgetown and we discussed structural oppression, our positionality and our role in the broader picture.”

Sekyere-Boateng has since worked as a YLEAD peer leader, a Sexual Assault Peer Educators (SAPE) Fellow and participated in the Leaders in Education, Advocacy and Dialogues (LEAD) program. He is also part of the African Society of Georgetown (ASG) and worked as course assistant in a class on introductory python. During his time on the Hilltop, Sekyere-Boateng co-founded The Cookout, a retreat for Black students at Georgetown, with peers from YLEAD. 

For Sekyere-Boateng, his Station1 Fellowship felt like the culmination of an educational transformation that started when he first set foot on the Hilltop. 

“What truly excited me was that it was the first space where my interests really intersected. Often, being the only, or one of the very few, Black students in a classroom can be isolating,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “However, this fellowship afforded me the opportunity to scrutinize computer science through the lenses I acquired from YLEAD and my other academic pursuits.” 

After graduating this December, Sekyere-Boateng plans to continue pursuing justice through technology. 

“I aspire to become a software engineer with a company that’s dedicated to coding for positive impact,” said Sekyere-Boateng. “Eventually, I would also like to delve deeper into research, building on the work I undertook during the summer. Ultimately, however, my goal is to become a professor, teaching computer science that is both holistic and intersectional.”

“‘Bitter Flower’ is about a profound conflict between Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells-Barnett,” explains Fink, a professor in the and core faculty in the . “The play asks us to confront the racist foundations of the women’s suffrage movement so a truly egalitarian movement can flower.”

Grounded in a historical moment whose realities are often obscured or forgotten, “Bitter Flower” is a riveting show that will have audiences rethinking their perceptions of the suffrage movement and the continued legacies of racism and classism in today’s social justice movements. 

“‘Bitter Flower’ brings two powerhouses to life,” Fink says. “Jane Addams was an immense force in American politics – the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize. She’s a leading suffragist, she’s a socialist, but she’s relying on racist rhetoric in her advocacy.”

The work highlights how tenuous and contentious political alliances were in American politics. It explores the ways that power imbalances affected who was heard and how far their voice traveled.

“Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born in slavery,” says Fink. “She became a publisher and a journalist, founded the NAACP with Frederick Douglass, helped start the civil rights movement and fight lynching and founded the Black women’s suffrage movement. Yet few learn about her in American public schools.” 

From Seed to Flower

Fink began working on the project more than three years ago to commemorate the centennial of the 19th amendment. With artist Julia Laffin, Fink developed a performance piece in 2020 entitled ‘UNDERBELLY’, which involved dual-sided sashes each representing individual suffragists. 

“We created 50 sashes corresponding to real suffragists – 25 white women and 25 Black women, with their names on one side and their forgotten history on the other,” says Fink. “In the case of the Black women, their unheralded achievements and, in the case of the white women, their bitter truth – that this was a racist movement.”

After delving into the history of the suffragist movement, and finding more than she’d expected, Fink couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to the story. After reading dueling editorials written by Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells-Barnett centering on lynching, racism and suffrage, Fink decided to take their public feud and dramatize it as a personal tĂȘte-Ă -tĂȘte. “Bitter Flower” is the product of an interdisciplinary collaboration between Fink and other artists, practitioners, thinkers and students. 

“Once I read the script, I saw that Jennifer had included these puppeteered hats, which functioned as a Greek chorus commenting on each side of the debate that Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Jane Addams are having,” recounts director . “I envisioned them as an ensemble of actors who would be able to use song and gestural language to comment on the conflict between these two women.”

Working with Jonathan Girling, a Broadway and Royal Shakespeare Company composer, the team has brought a strongly emotive, musical component to the production. 

“In one scene, we have a character composing a letter,” says Gonzalez, a professor in the and co-founder of the . “Jonathan has punctuated the beats of the letter with an incredible sound score to bring emotion and intensity to each word.”

Set in the waning days of the Gilded Age, “Bitter Flower” is brought to life by costumes and ornate hats, which are now worn by the actors instead of puppeteered. 

“We researched Edwardian and turn-of-the-century fashion,” explains assistant director and costume coordinator Daisy Steinthal (SFS’23). “We designed the looks for each character, and built costume pieces, most notably the hats our ensemble members wear.” 

Steinthal, a culture and politics (CULP) major with minors in theology and economics, has been excited to work alongside Gonzalez, whose work has appeared on PBS national television, at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the Tribeca Performing Arts Center and a slew of professional and academic spaces. 

“Assisting Anita has been an incredible experience,” says Steinthal. “Each rehearsal, I learn more about directing through working alongside her and with our actors. I appreciate the relationship we have built, and I love the chance to hear about and discuss other projects she is working on across the country.” 

After each performance, audience members will be invited into a tea parlor staged by the artistic team to facilitate conversations around the historical realities of the suffrage movement with Georgetown experts in history, gender and justice and disability studies.

The show will run from November 16-19. Tickets are available through Eventbrite. 

“The field of philosophy of disability has been around since at least the nineties, and it has steadily grown,” explains Reynolds, who founded the journal last year. “But there has never been a dedicated, scholarly outlet for debates in the field to develop according to their own terms and for scholars working in the field to have a very focused place to engage with one another.”

That all changed last year, when the journal’s first issue made waves in the disability studies space. Reynolds, an Assistant Professor in the œÛŚÓÊÓÆ” & Sciences and a Senior Research Scholar in the , is one of the core faculty members of the College’s . Pulling together funding and resources from disparate sources was essential to getting this project started. 

“I was grateful to work with the Philosophy Documentation Center to get it up and running, thanks to the very generous support of Georgetown University,” Reynolds says. “It would not exist without Georgetown, so I’m very thankful to them.”

Building Space, Inviting Conversation

Reynolds edits the journal alongside , a philosophy professor and bioethicist at Gallaudet University. In an opening salvo framing the journal’s purpose and intent, the two outlined the need for such a journal. 

“By virtue of the centrality of disability to all life, philosophy of disability is a field that touches upon nearly every area of philosophical inquiry,” they wrote. “The Journal of Philosophy of Disability has been founded to be a locus for deepening philosophical debates around disability, which is to say, a locus for deepening philosophical debates about a central aspect of being human.”

The journal includes more than just peer-reviewed articles, which are an important part of growing the field as a unique academic space, and also publishes book reviews, editorials, invited pieces from eminent scholars and even reprints of landmark works. In short, the journal is a home and focal point for all things related to the philosophy of disability. 

For Reynolds, the journal brings together two groups of people – those who are committed to building out disability studies in higher education through programs and initiatives and those who are committed to building out the research side, through peer-reviewed articles and edited volumes. 

“There’s a natural synergy here,” Reynolds explains. “We need people doing this work – doing it together and doing it in conversation with one another. I think people are very happy that it exists, that it’s open access, and that it’s sparking debates in good ways, sparking genuine conversations that are rooted in disability experience.”

The managing editor is Sabrina Leeds, a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Philosophy. The journal’s work intersects with the College’s , giving another platform for professors and students to expand their studies and research. 

“I hope that the journal sparks conversations about what, exactly, philosophy of disability is and how it is distinct from, but always in conversation with, disabled philosophy, disability studies, philosophy of medicine, bioethics and phenomenology,” Leeds says. “I think that clarifying the differences between these areas, examining what each of them can do for us and mapping out the contours of the ongoing conversations between them has the potential to provide us with novel conceptual tools that might be practically useful for the purpose of disability rights activism and the pursuit of intersectional liberatory projects.”

The second issue promises to live up to that aspiration,exploring definitions of disability and how those interact with lived experiences. The journal includes a piece from Thomas Nadelhoffer, a professor at the College of Charleston, that explores how individuals with chronic pain have been excluded from the discussion of disabilities. Another important piece is from , a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and director of the Disability Studies program, on how diseases are defined and the ways in which those definitions matter. 

“Our main vision for the future is one of enriching ongoing debates and research,” says Reynolds. “We are building out new areas of inquiry inside of philosophy of disability and are helping to sustain a growing community of philosophers of disability.”

“It is a great honor to be invited into the Georgetown community in this way. I hope to spend my time edifying the students and faculty through my art, discussion and being together,” Herman says. “I cannot think of a better way to spend a semester!”

While working on VITRUVIAN, Herman is interested in developing a dialectical online platform to facilitate community engagement with his ideas and work. As part of his residency, Herman will also offer virtual office hours, class visits, public workshops/talks and other opportunities to inform, enrich and teach. 

“Jerron brings unparalleled brilliance and expertise in disability arts, as well as a collaborative, generous spirit,” says director of the Program in Disability Studies. “His award-winning work engages the intersections of disability arts and Black masculinities and crosses genres as well as discourses.”

Herman is a prolific artist in the disability space, whose nuanced work has not only invited discussions but drawn accolades as well. Herman has been featured in – and on the cover of – , at and in theater, dance and performance venues around the world. He is a collective member of Kinetic Light, with which he is developing Wired, premiering 2022. He is also a trustee for and a teacher-choreographer for children with disabilities for the DREAM Project at the National Dance Institute. 

A model, dancer, choreographer, advocate, educator and theater artist, Herman is known for his collaborative, innovative and thoughtful approach to building art and community. Last year, Herman was named a by the Ford Foundation & Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His play 3 Bodies will be featured in Theater magazine’s forthcoming issue. 

This exciting residency is made possible through the support and work of several people. Notably, who initially connected with Herman and both , whose generous donation supports both the Ethics Lab and the Disability Studies Program. 

, Founder and Associate Director of the Program in Disability Studies, has been instrumental in establishing this residency alongside , a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. 

“I want to bring awareness to the speech and debate world,” says Cronk. “I want the kids participating to know that accessibility is a thing that they deserve. I want to see speech and debate organizations at every level reevaluate what they are doing and make honest efforts to reach out to their disabled participants and help them in the ways they can.” 

Deconstructing Ableism in Speech and Debate

Cronk was active in debate during middle school and high school, eventually winning the 2017 California State Championship in Original Oratory when she was only a sophomore. She also became involved in several events including public forum debate and policy debate with high levels of success, saying that it was “one of the first things I have ever been deeply passionate about.” 

“I spent most of my free time studying linguistic theory, watching great speeches, reading on online forums about the theory that was related, going to tournaments, leading the team and more,” Cronk explains. “It was just so fun and something I felt like was my thing.”

Despite obstacles that she faced in high school, Cronk decided that she wanted to go to the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions (NIETOC) and wrote and memorized a 10-minute speech two weeks before the first bid competition in Arizona. After she was accepted into and won the second bid competition, she went on to place in the top 20 for the NIETOC tournament. 

“By that point, my speech was very popular — it was a speech about menstruation titled ‘The Most Uncomfortable Speech Ever Written. Period,’” says Cronk. “People would look at the room assignments to see where I was speaking to come and watch me. But I was miserable the whole time.” 

Cronk stopped doing speech and debate despite her success because of the lack of accommodations available in the high-stress environment. 

“I never had enough in-round preparation time or space to take care of my mental health needs and that resulted in dozens of panic attacks,” Cronk explains. “Had there been a system for accommodations that allowed a time and a half for in-round preparation, I might have been able to continue debating…I ended up quitting my junior year because of the lack of support and stress that caused.” 

After coming to Georgetown, Cronk began to become more involved with the Program in Disability Studies, taking a one-credit class with Lydia X. Brown. Cronk was so impacted by the course that she also took Professor Brown’s Capstone course. The skills she gained from these classes gave her the education “to be able to identify unfair and inequitable practices and the confidence to point them out.” 

During the pandemic, she was asked to join virtual debate tournaments as a judge over Zoom. Re-entering the world of debate with a more informed perspective made Cronk realize how many ableist policies existed in this arena. 

“I began to reflect on my past experiences, and I could see how much disability and ableism played into me quitting something I really loved and excelled at,” Cronk explains. “I could not stop thinking about the possibility that I might be able to make even a small change so no one else has to experience something similar to what I or other alumni have gone through. Speech and debate might seem niche, and it is, but to the people in the activity it is everything and so deeply beloved, and I want to do my part to work toward equality for the disabled folks in the activity who have largely been unaccounted for.”

Through 1AC, Cronk hopes to change policies in high school debates so that everyone can participate equitably. Current rules, such as requiring that all debaters stand during their speeches, eliminate many potential students from participating.  

Other policies such as speed reading, timekeeping or even the food that is served during debates create inaccessible environments to many. Those who have mobility access needs face challenges navigating unknown college campuses where the majority of high school debates are held and these individuals are often fined for arriving late after these needs have not been met.

Nuisance fees also fine entries for leaving tournaments including emergent medical needs, which not only presents difficulties for those with disabilities but for those with economic hardships as well. 

“This constellation of inconsideration provides considerable barriers that disabled children may not be able to overcome and ultimately may be the cause for them leaving the activity, which is a real shame,” Cronk says. “Disabled people deserve to participate by virtue of being people, obviously. But also, I think the speech and debate community really loses out on the enrichment of disabled thought and expression.”

Experiences in Education

Cronk says that her time as a double English and philosophy major have helped her to not only learn how to write a good essay, but have motivated her to articulate and defend her thoughts about the world.   

“Professor Nathan Hensley in particular encouraged us to be bold and creative in whatever projects we did in his class,” says Cronk. “After writing a bunch of fun and innovative essays during my college career so far, I think I have become more comfortable with pointing out the things that I see with my unique brain.” 

Hensley, Ph.D. and a professor in the Department of English whose work examines nineteenth-century British literature, environmental humanities and critical theory says that he “loved how Alanna’s work was always trying something new, putting things together, taking new angles on familiar ideas.” 

“When she wrote on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, for example, she used a notation scheme from formal logic to challenge the supposed ‘madness’ of Alice’s new life: it turns out the nonsense Alice found so baffling actually does make a certain, different kind of sense,” Hensley explains. “Now more than ever, it seems to me that the world doesn’t need more thinkers who repeat the ideas we already know. An English degree helps train students to change the way we look at things — and Alanna’s work is a beautiful example of that.”

In addition to her advocacy work, Cronk is also the publication editor for the Georgetown Scientific Research Journal and is a member of the Native American Student Council. She also tutors for DC Reads. 

After graduating from Georgetown, Cronk hopes to pursue a Ph.D. that incorporates applied ethics and disability. 

1AC is partially funded through SIPS, which will support an exhibition tournament that implements the accessible practices promoted by the organization. The tournament is planned for the first weekend in August and has been approved by the National Speech and Debate Association to host on the national circuit. 

The junior says that she is strongly motivated in this work by understanding the importance of not giving up. 

“When you are disabled, the world is not designed for you, and you kind of just have to relentlessly be committed to what you want to make your dreams happen,” Cronk says. “I expect this {organization} will be the same. But I have an incredible amount of determination to get things done, and I plan on making a lot of noise doing it.” 

“Accessibility.georgetown.edu is a remarkable resource created by University Information Services (UIS) that forms the basis for our efforts to create lasting change in our accessibility practices,” says Rifkin. “It includes not just our policy on electronic accessibility, but tons of guidelines, fact sheets and webinars that provide information about how to build an accessible website, course materials and social media presence, among other things.”

She currently serves as the first Special Advisor for Disability to the Vice President of Rosemary Kilkenny, a role that expands Georgetown’s commitment to valuing disability as an identity and dimension of diversity.

Accessibility for All

This work is a continuation of Georgetown’s past efforts to improve electronic and information technology accessibility. Rifkin and her collaborators wanted to find a way to disseminate best accessibility practices to those responsible for creating communications materials such as electronic documents or social media graphics, many of whom are student workers. 

Kevin Andrews, the electronic information technology accessibility coordinator for UIS, says that “assessing and ensuring the accessibility of public and student-facing websites, systems, and applications is a priority.” 

“The policy seeks to promote and achieve digital equity through the university’s websites, documents, multimedia, software/hardware and procurement processes,” Andrews explains. “We are extremely grateful for the work Professor Rifkin has done to advance digital inclusion through her engagement with various stakeholders around the university, and we look forward to continued collaboration.”

Rifkin says that this is important, as good communication, at its core, is about reaching the widest audience.  

“It is crucial that we include people who use screen readers, or need captions for videos, or those who may benefit from plain language, like people with intellectual disabilities, ” says Rifkin. “It’s about putting our audience’s diverse ways of receiving and processing information at the center of our communication process and doing this not just because we want to comply with the law, but because we want to make everyone feel welcome, like they belong.“

When learning these best practices, the professor says that she went through a learning curve herself, but she was grateful to university colleagues who held her accountable. 

“In the beginning, with the Disability Studies Program, I repeatedly approved flyers and event emails that were not accessible to people with visual impairments,” says Rifkin. “But colleagues like Lynn Delles, director of communications for Georgetown College, taught me the basics of accessible design and we have worked together with other partners to make this platform available to everyone. I believe we need to take a proactive approach to promoting accessible communications as part of a truly inclusive culture.”

. Work will be done over the summer with departments and units to help educate communicators on best practices.