Wednesday, July 18, 9:00 am - 10:30 am
On Inclusivity and Mental Health: Reconsidering Space and Time in Higher Education
Margaret Price, Ph.D., The Ohio State University
In AHEAD's opening plenary, Margaret Price draws upon 10 years of research to consider ways that mental health is included—and not included—in higher-education settings including classrooms, meeting spaces, and extracurricular activities. Price argues that “including” students (as well as employees) with mental health histories in higher education will mean more than simply offering extra supports. Instead, it will mean rethinking many of the structures and texts that we’ve come to rely upon in higher education, so that we are not merely including those with mental-health disabilities, but consistently expecting them. Price offers a means to this rethinking through her theories of “kairotic space” and “crip spacetime,” and also offers practical suggestions for how to implement those theories in the everyday life of higher education teaching and administration.
Dr. Price is Associate Professor and director of the Disability Studies program at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Mad at School: Rhetorics of Mental Disability and Academic Life (2011), which won the Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on College Composition and Communication, and was called “the book of mental health and higher education” in the Chronicle of Higher Ed. Price is also a co-author of the nationally-recognized study “Disclosure of Mental Disability by College and University Faculty: The Negotiation of Accommodations, Supports and Barriers,” the first-ever cross-institutional study of faculty members with mental disabilities. Margaret was recently inducted into the Susan M. Daniels Mentoring Hall of Fame in recognition of her extensive involvement in mentoring and positive impact of the lives of youth and adults with disabilities.