Eco-Ability Reading Group
Disability, Environmental & Animal Justice
Meeting year: 2025 (Jan - Jun)
The Eco-Ability Reading Group: Disability, Environmental & Animal Justice took place on the 1st Friday of the month from Jan - June 2025.
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To attend, click here for details how to be added to the mailing list. This also gives you access to the readings
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Click here for suggestions of readings we've read in previous RGs.
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In 2025, the Eco-ability Reading Group (this one) and the Cripping Pedagogy Reading Group (3rd Fri/mo) ran parallel in the first six months.
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Meeting 91: 3 Jan 2025
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Topic: Human-nature interdependency and ecopedagogy
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Reading: Adams, Sarah R. (2019). "The interdependency of humans and nature: A plea for ecopedagogy and eco-ability activism". In: Anthony J Nocella II, Amber E George & John Lupinacci (Eds), Animals, Disability and the End of Capitalism (pp.25-37): Peter Lang.
Meeting 93: 7 Feb 2025
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Topic: Bhopal, disability & environmental justice
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Reading: Mannur, Anita. (2017). "'That Night': Seeing Bhopal through the lens of disability and environmental justice studies". In: Sarah Jaquette Ray & Jay Sibara (Eds), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-crip Theory (pp.381-401). London: University of Nebraska Press.
Meeting 95: 7 Mar 2025
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Topic: Language, mattering humans & disability
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Reading: Chen, Mel Y. (2012). "Language and Mattering Humans [Chapter 1]". Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (pp.21-55): Duke University Press.
Meeting 97: 4 Apr 2025
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Topic: Disabled women & sustainable development in Africa
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Reading: Chataika, Tsitsi. (2017). "Disabled Women, Urbanization and Sustainable Development in Africa". In: Anita Lacey (Ed), Women, Urbanization and Sustainability: Practices of Survival, Adaptation and Resistance (pp.177-196). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Meeting 99: 2 May 2025
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Topic: Toxic pregnancies & neoliberal capital
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Reading: Fritsch, Kelly. (2017). "Toxic pregnancies: Speculative futures, disabling environments, and neoliberal biocapital". In: Sarah Jaquette Ray & Jay Sibara (Eds), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-crip Theory (pp.359-380). London: University of Nebraska Press.
Meeting 101: 6 Jun 2025
Topic 1: Environmental racism, disability & the law
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Reading: Wilson, Britney R. (2021). "Making me ill: environmental racism and justice as disability". U. Pa. L. Rev., 170, pp.1721-1755.
Topic 2: Cognitive disability & Animality
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Reading: Crary, Alice. (2018). "The horrific history of comparisons between cognitive disability and animality (and how to move past it)". In: Lori Gruen & Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (Eds), Animaladies: Gender, Animals, and Madness (pp.117-136): Bloomsbury.
Topic 3: Cross-species identification, autism & cognition
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Reading: Mitchell, David T, & Snyder, Sharon L. (2017). "Precarity and cross-species identification: Autism, the critique of normative cognition, and nonspeciesism". In: Sarah Jaquette Ray & Jay Sibara (Eds), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-crip Theory (pp.553-572). London: University of Nebraska Press.
READINGS WE DID NOT DISCUSS IN THE END
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Topic: Ticks, veganism & logics of debility
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Reading: Falek, Joshua, & Butler, Cameron. (2020). "Tricky Ticks and Vegan Quips: The Lone Star Tick and Logics of Debility". Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(2), pp.157-183.
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Topic: Anti-racism, anti-ableism and critical animal studies
- Reading: Nocella II, Anthony J, George, Amber E, Lupinacci, John, et al. (2019). "Critical Animal Studies and the importance of anti-racist and anti-ableist politics". In: Anthony J Nocella II, Amber E George & John Lupinacci (Eds), Animals, Disability and the End of Capitalism (pp.9-23): Peter Lang.
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Topic: Disability culture nature poetry
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Reading: Kuppers, Petra. (2007). "Outsides: disability culture nature poetry". Journal of Literary Disability, 1(1), pp.22-33.
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Topic: Disability & disaster risk reduction
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Reading: Spurway, Kim, & Griffiths, Thao. (2016). "Disability-Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction: Vulnerability and Resilience Discourses, Policies and Practices". In: Shaun Grech & Karen Soldatic (Eds), Disability in the Global South: The Critical Handbook (pp.469-482). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Further reading suggestions
Find here suggestions of (1) introductory texts and (2) texts we have already read in previous reading groups and that touch on disability (etc.) as well as on environmental and/or animal justice:
If you want to, here are a few introductory studies which you can read beforehand/alongside the Eco-Ability RG:
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Jenkins, Stephanie, Montford, Kelly Struthers, & Taylor, Chloë. (2020). "Disability and animality: Introduction". In: Stephanie Jenkins, Kelly Struthers Montford & Chloë Taylor (Eds), Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (pp.1-9): Routledge.
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Johnson, Valerie Ann. (2017). "Bringing together feminist disability studies and environmental justice". In: Sarah Jaquette Ray & Jay Sibara (Eds), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-crip Theory (pp.73-93). London: University of Nebraska Press.
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Kafer, Alison. (2017). "Bodies of nature: The environmental politics of disability". In: Sarah Jaquette Ray & Jay Sibara (Eds), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-crip Theory (pp.201-241). London: University of Nebraska Press.
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Nocella II, Anthony J. (2017). "Defining eco-ability: Social justice and the intersectionality of disability, nonhuman animals, and ecology". In: Sarah Jaquette Ray & Jay Sibara (Eds), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-crip Theory (pp.141-167). London: University of Nebraska Press.
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Taylor, Sunaura. (2024). Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert. Univ of California Press.
Suggestions of texts we already read in previous reading groups:
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Cowing, Jess L. (2020). "Occupied Land is an Access Issue: Interventions in Feminist Disability Studies and Narratives of Indigenous Activism". Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 17 (Fall), 9-25. [Disability RG: 3 Dec 2021]
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Gibbons, S. (2017). "Neurological diversity and environmental (in)justice: The ecological other in popular and journalist representations of autism." In S. J. Ray & J. Sibara (Eds.), Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory (pp. 531-551). London: University of Nebraska Press. [Neurodiversity RG: 17 Jan 2020]
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Jampel, Catherine. (2018). "Intersections of disability justice, racial justice and environmental justice". Environmental Sociology, 4(1), 122-135. [Disability RG: 1 Apr 2022]
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Kafer, A. (2013). "Bodies of nature: The environmental politics of disability," Feminist, Queer, Crip (pp. 129-148): Indiana University Press. [Neurodiversity RG: 17 Jan 2020]