About Crip/Queer Studies at GWU

"The primary idea was to address 

an emerging interest in intersectionality studies – the ways in which we all occupy 

multiple identities"

David Mitchell

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Reblogged from www.ThingsTransform.com
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The value that Crip/Queer studies at the George Washington University has in the wider academic community was perhaps most clearly evidenced for me as I was preparing to leave GWU after completing a Masters Degree. At that time, I was fortunate and privileged enough to be accepted into substantial Ph.D programs, any of which I would have been immensely gracious to attend. It is this bounty of offers that drew my attention back to GWU. In some of the correspondence I received inviting me to join the university, it was mentioned that they wanted someone like me, doing what I do. They had no one else. Thinking this over, I found that they may very well be right. 

Indeed, what we do here at GWU is in many respects unique, or at least rare - too rare. Universities offer a bounty of gifts that no student can repay, but GWU offers a unique combination of resources and mentorship that cannot be found anywhere else - what we call our Crip/Queer Studies. In the end, I chose to go to GWU for my Ph.D because I am a unique scholar, with a unique project, and the unique programs at GWU, especially in Crip/Queer and Medieval Studies, creates a unique convergence of opportunities that I want to grow in and further throughout my career.

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What characterizes myself, my project, and Crip/Queer studies is not only an attention to the uniqueness of particular persons but the movement that turns from individual to collective struggles. It is not unheard of to have centers for Disability Studies and LGBT Resources, but often the premise of these programs is the policing of borders around identity categories. There are critically important issues and violences that stick to our bodies with the glue of identity and this should never be underestimated. However, identity can too often work by turning away from the shared experiences of those who are not recognized as sharing an identity. Too often, for instance, transgender is left out of the considerations of LGBT activist groups because the issue of gender is often handled separately from the issue of sexuality (which has become the focus of the organization). 

Likewise, to use the same example, transgender is rarely considered a part of the disability rights movement, despite the shared experiences with social mechanisms of diagnosis, treatment with drugs or surgery, and a history of alienation, stigma and incarceration. In academia, in part propelled by the work of the scholars here, the words Crip and Queer signify not merely a more elastic collection of experiences but a methodology that critiques identity as itself a part of the mechanisms of social control. Rather than close off the conversation, Crip/Queer studies embraces the collective struggle of the Trans, the Crip and the Queer with countless other marginalized modes of living.

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As a transgender woman completing her Ph.D with a dissertation on transgender in the middle ages, GWU's Crip/Queer studies area offers the unique resources and support systems that make my scholarship possible. Any time you enter into careers where your community and your area of work are underrepresented or unrepresented, there are bound to be countless roadblocks as people find it difficult to even imagine the possibility of your existence within the field. The choice to come out as transgender and transition occurred to the sound of countless doors closing - relationships I would never have, conversations I would never hear, jobs I would never get. 

The unlikeliness of finding work only compounded when I made the decision to pursue the study of transgender in the middle ages, a time and area of research, many too readily assume, in which discussions of transgender has no place. One of the first investments GWU's Crip/Queer Studies offered me was to open the door to give me entrance into a shared academic space. It does more than imagining the possibility of a more inclusive and diverse social project, it makes continued investments in students, faculty, staff, and programming to make those possibilities into a reality.

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In particular, it is worth noting a few features of GWU's Crip/Queer studies area that make it a fantastic resource. First, the quality and diversity of the faculty in the Crip/Queer area of study makes GWU a powerhouse that supercharges intellectual energies not only here, in the US, but transnationally. Students of Prof. Robert McRuer and Prof. David Mitchell travel abroad to places like the Czech Republic and Germany to experience the living material cultures of crip and queer subjectivities past and present. They also attract scholars from around the world to visit to give scholars at GWU perspectives on issues of race, religion, gender, sexuality, and disability that are otherwise difficult to get in and around DC. 

This influx of academic resources are none the more evident than in the Disability Studies conference hosted at GWU every couple years, where the University becomes a magnet for the critical work of leading scholars from around the world. The coursework provided by the Crip/Queer faculty and graduate students widen the discussion of medieval, early-modern, american, and british, post-colonial literatures to include often elided topics. As a result, the unique scholarship being produced from the undergrad level, to the Ph.D, to the faculty are demonstrating in quantifiable and unquantifiable ways the invaluable products of hosting a Crip/Queer studies group at the University.