Full Description
Shifting Blind Identities: Stories of Selfhood features accounts of how blindness and low vision intersect with other dimensions of identity for both students and faculty in higher education. Contributors from a range of institutional contexts illuminate "common but not comparable" experiences, as well as importantly different ones, and explore different intersections of identity while navigating higher education spaces. Each chapter addresses these questions: What is the relationship between seeing and selfhood? What choices do students and faculty make about how they experience and represent the intersections of their vision condition and other dimensions of their identity? What do authors wish others to understand, consider, let go of, and/or embrace regarding their experiences of navigating higher education with blindness or low vision?
Writing in their own unique voices, each author shares details of their lived experiences; analyses of how those are shaped by institutions, social norms, and individuals; and offers action steps for how everyone can make higher education more welcoming to and supportive of not only those with blindness or low vision but also those with a wide diversity of identities and experiences. Shifting Blind Identities inspires both insight and action into cultivating a more accessible and inclusive space in higher education.
Contents
Introduction: Unfolding Stories, Alison Cook-Sather
Section I: Student Stories of Selfhood
1. Blink and It's Gone: Searching for Identity and Security after Sight Loss, Rose West
2. Unfiltered Education, Ibeth Miranda
3. Layers of Identity: Learning to Be All of Me, Morgan Cook-Sather
4. Exploring Our Shared Humanity to Deepen Connections between a Blind and Autistic Student and Her Academic Advisor, Ashley Neybert and Martin Storksdieck
5. A Vision for Community, Salaar Kahn
Section II: Faculty Stories of Selfhood
6. Perpetual Transition, H. May
7. Agency vs. Communion: Why I Have Struggled to Ask for Help When I Needed It, Kira McCabe
8. The View from Here: Insights from a Blind Academic, RaLynn McGuire
9. Adelante: Plugging Through Higher Education, Karen Arcos
10. From the Back of the Mirror, Nicholas Racheotes
Conclusion: Considerations and Recommendations for Moving toward Equity Culture, Alison Cook-Sather
Additional Resources
Contributor Bios
