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The WFU Disability Studies Initiative invites you to:

Black Disability Poetics and Politics: A Conversation with Sami Schalk and Vilissa Thompson
Tuesday, March 28, 2023 from 4:00pm to 5:15pm
Location: Z. Smith Reynolds Library Auditorium (ZSR 404)

Dr. Sami Schalk is an Associate Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Schalk’s interdisciplinary research focuses broadly on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture, especially speculative fiction and Black literature. She is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability,

 Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (Duke University Press 2018) and Black Disability Politics (Duke University Press 2022). Vilissa Thompson, LMSW, is a disability rights consultant, writer, and activist. She is the Founder & CEO of Ramp Your Voice!, an organization focused on promoting self-advocacy and strengthening empowerment among disabled people. She created the #DisabilityTooWhite viral hashtag in 2016 that addressed the lack of diversity within the disability community.

This conversation has been organized by the Wake Forest Disability Studies Initiative and has been sponsored by the following: the Wake Forest University Humanities Institute with support made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Provost’s Fund for a Vibrant Campus; the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; the Disa

bility Affinity Resource Group.

Open to the public. For disability accommodations, please contact Kristina Gupta at guptaka@wfu.edu.
A Google slide version of the flyer is available here.