Applying crip authenticity in the classroom calls on professors to approach accessibility from a perspective of open and ongoing dialogue with students rather than having students submit medical documentation once a semester and get a prescriptive set of accommodations. Crip authenticity calls on accessibility to be a dynamic process that makes space for the fluid nature of disability. Dialogue and narrative-based inquiries - like those shown at the University of Arizona's accommodation system - shift the focus of accommodations to students' own testimony to changing needs rather than focusing on whether access specialists and professors perceive a student as disabled. 

Applying Crip Authenticity to Academia

Crip authenticity refers to practices that center the fluid nature of disability and time that reject ableist assumptions that prescribe normative assumptions for how people are supposed to inhabit their bodies and engage with space and time. Crip authenticity recognizes disability as fluid both throughout a person's lifespan and when individuals move from one context to another.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

- Example: Disability Services as the University of Arizona
- Crip Authenticity
- Perceiving Disability as Diversity
- Syllabus Statements

How to Move Toward Embracing Disability as Fluid in Academia

Crip Time is a term coined by Ellen Samuels, Allison Kafer, and Margaret Price to explain how disabled or crip bodymind embodiments often have different experiences with time. In particular Samuels, Kafer, and Price pose crip time as an alternative framing of time to counter how disabled individuals often have to place great strains on their bodyminds to meet nondisabled timetables - meet deadlines, be seen as at a similar stage of life to nondisabled peers, work similar 9-5 positions. These timelines fail to understand why disabled bodies' experiences may not be able to nicely fit these expectations. Crip time offers a temporal framing that makes the clock fit the disabled bodymind rather than making the disabled bodymind fit the clock.

Crip Time

Abrams, E. J., Floyd, C. E., & Abes, E. S. (2024). Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 43(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v43i4.8270

Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education

Abrams, E. J. & Abes, E. S. (2021). "It's finding peace in my body": Using crip theory to understand authenticity for a queer, disabled college student. Journal of College Student Development, 62(3), 261–275. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2021.0021

"It's finding peace in my body": Using crip theory to understand authenticity for a queer, disabled college student.

An example of how we can improve disability services in academia to crip the accommodation process by viewing disability as fluid comes from a 2017 case study Kroger and Kraus did of the University of Arizona. The University of Arizona used guidelines from the Association of Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD) and implemented these guidelines into their process by instead of having students just present medical information and be given a set of accommodations students discussed with staff the disability barriers they faced. Students were able to edit and adjust accommodations throughout the semester based on their needs. 

Example: Disability Services at the University of Arizona

Crip Authenticity

Having Disability Service departments embrace disability as fluid also helps shift disability from being perceived as a harmful derivation from the norm and shifts disability to being perceived in higher education as a form of diversity. When this culture shift is picked up by broader campuses it can mitigate the amount of time students spend considering if they are 'disabled enough' to receive accommodations.

How Viewing Disability as Fluid can Change Student Views

Shifting viewing disability to diversity also pushes back against academic ableism in the classroom - e.g. rigid class attendance and participation policies which penalize fluid disability. Views of disability as fluid can be implemented in the classroom through the syllabus statement.  

How Disability to Diversity changes the Classroom

"I very much want all students to thrive in this course. If you need an accommodation in order to fulfill the requirements of the course, you are encouraged to contact [Student Disability Services]. Disabilities may be apparent or non-apparent, such as physical disabilities, learning disabilities, and psychological disabilities (mental health). I also know that disability is fluid and that the nature of disability sometimes changes throughout the semester. As such, you might not know all of your accommodation needs at the start of the semester. I hope that, to the extent possible, you will feel comfortable disclosing this information and discussing your disability/ies with me. I want to work against the stigma often associated with disability and the ways that higher education is ableist. It is your right to be successful in this course."

Example: Syllabus Statement from Elisa Abes

Higher education, also has non-disabled temporal expectations ingrained and promoted by the institution. These expectations often come up in expectations of how long a student should take to go from matriculation to graduation - which often has financial ties to amounts of scholarships, and institutional ties to how long faculty and administrative staff expect to be working with a student, the institutionalized rhythm of a semester or quarter, the pace of coursework, or the idealized temporal expectations around how students should show up in the class room or approach academic assignments. Disabled students are expected to keep up with this timeline.

The Non-Crip Temporalities of Academia

Slow Professoring, introduced by Maggie Bergs and Barbara K. Seeber, is a proposed way of asserting Crip Spacetime and Crip Time within academic spaces that often punish slowness by centering deliberation and slowness over acceleration in academic work.

Slow Professoring

Price highlights that Thick Temporality becomes even more pertinent when talking about theories of Crip Time including Alison Kafer's discussion of crip time that highlights how while we image crip futurity to leave behind the history of harm, abuse, colonization and slavery that are central to modern and historic definitions of the formation of disability, futurity my reinscribe these things. 

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