Integrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies

Abstract

This article envisions and details a critical framework we term feminist-of-color disability studies. In offering a feminist disability studies grounded in the genealogies of US feminist-of-color theory, we identify, challenge, and counter the tendency of feminist disability studies scholars to exclude the intellectual output of women and queers of color. We contend that feminists of color have long written and theorized on topics of illness, health, and disability, yet their vital insights remain largely disregarded by practitioners of feminist disability studies. Within the article, we detail critical methods and approaches essential to integrating race into feminist disability studies. Then, building upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s groundbreaking “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory,” we identify and discuss what we name as the central domains of feminist-of-color disability studies: discourse, state violence, health/care, and activism. Overall, this article aims to trace an alternate lineage of feminist disability studies that centralizes the scholarship of feminists of color by identifying potential sites of analysis and opportunities for cross-pollination as well as providing a substantive foundation for future feminist-of-color disability studies scholarship across a variety of disciplines.