Research Focus Group Talk: Understanding LatDisCrit Contours

In this talk, Alexis Padilla will focus on defining and showing the significance of LatDisCrit as a transdisciplinary sub-field. Padilla will use three illustrative counterstories to capture how disability gets racialized in Latinx marginalization dynamics, while race/ethnicity serves as a proxy for oppressive disablement through exclusionary processes within US settings.

Dr. Alexis Padilla is the Director of Research at the Disability Policy Consortium. Padilla is the author of Disability, Intersectional Agency, and Latinx Identity. Theorizing LatDisCrit Counterstories, a book that links dis/ability and agency by exploring LatDisCrit’s theory and activist emancipatory practice. It refers to the author’s experiential and analytical views as a blind brown Latinx engaged scholar and activist from the global South living and struggling in the highly racialized global North context of the United States. Padilla is a Ph.D. graduate from the Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies Department at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Padilla is also a lawyer, sociologist, and conflict transformation engaged scholar. His work explores emancipatory learning and radical agency in the context of decolonial Latinx theorizing and critical disability studies. His published contributions emphasize the activist/disability advocacy vantage point combined with actionable dimensions of inclusive equity research and practice. Padilla’s postsecondary teaching experience encompasses almost three decades. He has more than 20 years of engagement in advocacy and conflict resolution work with Spanish-speaking families and English Language Learning students with disabilities in various U.S. settings. Since Spring 2020, he has been affiliated with Phillips Theological Seminary to expand his research agenda and his activism scope into intersectional disability theology.

Register here for the Zoom attendance link

Sponsored by the IHC’s Disability Studies Initiative Research Focus Group, Comparative Literature Program, and Graduate Center for Literary Research

ASL interpretation will be provided.