In this book, the authors explore what constitutes boundary work at the intersection of traditional special education and critical disability studies in education. Readers will consider how their personal, professional, and programmatic actions can lead to freedom from the hegemony of traditional special education and White and Ability supremacy.

In Understanding the Boundary between Disability Studies and Special Education through Consilience, Self-Study, and Radical Love, the authors explore what it means to engage in boundary work at the intersection of traditional special education systems and critical disability studies in education. The book consists of fifteen groundbreaking accounts that challenge dominant medicalized discourses about what it means to exist within and around special education systems that create space for new conceptions of what it means to teach, lead, learn, and exist within a conciliatory space driven by radical love and disability justice principles. The book pushes readers to consider how their own personal, professional and programmatic future transformational actions can be driven by disruption and the desire for freedom from the hegemony of traditional special education and White and Ability supremacy.

Acknowledgments

Introduction, Holly Pearson

Chapter One: Practicing Consilience Between Disability Studies and Special Education—Some Thoughts from a Career-long Attempt, David J. Connor

Chapter Two: At the Nexus of Disability Studies in (Special) Education: Towards Consiliencatory Frameworks for Critical Emotion Praxis Liberation, David I, Hernández-Saca

Chapter Three: Anti-ableism in Teacher Education: Celebrating Disability Identity Through Self-study and Radical Love, Sarah Arvey Tov

Chapter Four: Teaching in the In-Between: Opportunities and Factors Informing Inclusive Reform in One School District, Amy J. Petersen, Danielle M. Cowley,Deborah J. Gallagher, and Shehreen Iqtadar

Chapter Five: On the Margins of the Marginalized: Protecting and Loving on Black Children with Intellectual Disability and Emotional and Behavior Disturbances, Lydia Ocasio-Stoutenburg

Chapter Six: Boundaries of Disability Studies and Special Education: Radical Pedagogy and Relatedness, Jane Strauss

Chapter Seven: Critical Coalition with/in the Boundaries: A Radical Love Response to Neoliberal Debilitation in Special Education, M. Nickie Coomer, Ashley Cartell Johnson, Brittany Aronson, and Ganiva Reyes

Chapter Eight: Introspecting the Radical Love Boundaries Between Deaf Studies and Special Education in an African Setting, Martin Musengi

Chapter Nine: Ethics of Care/ing Work/ers at the Boundary of Critical Dis/ability Studies and Special Education, Christina A. Bosch

Chapter Ten: Daring to Speak/Teach from our Hearts: A Self-study of Critical Disability Studies Teacher Education at the Boundaries of Ableism, Racism and Sexism as Faculty of Color, Shehreen Iqtadar and David I. Hernández-Saca

Chapter Eleven: Grappling with the Tensions: Cultivating Justice-Oriented Praxis Through Collaborative Autoethnographic Poetry, Amanda L. Miller, Chelsea Stinson, and Maria T. Timberlake

Chapter Twelve: Checklists and Merit Badges: On Whiteness, Ability, and the Boundary Between Special Education and Radical Love, JPB Gerald

Chapter Thirteen: Female Inclusive Educators of Color: Challenging White Privilege and the Mechanism of Dis/ablement Through Radical Love, Sarah Schlessinger

Chapter Fourteen: Blurring Boundaries: Dreaming/s of a Neurodivergent-Teacher-Parent-Student-Researcher, Ananí M. Vasquez

Chapter Fifteen: I Still Have Joy: Disability Justice as Praxis, Theory, and Research in a Special Education Teacher Preparation Program, Gloshanda Lawyer

Conclusion, Holly Pearson

About the Contributors