Tara Woods places disability disclosure in academia as a form of agentive rhetorics of risk management. This means that disability disclosure is informed by and happens based on how we perceive others as interpreting and be open to conceptualizations of disability outside the stereotypes of the medical model, but also is in itself a form of risk management in thinking about how others will respond to the disclosure.

Disclosure as Agentive Rhetorics of Risk Management

Megan noted that she deliberately didn't let students know she could hear them questioning how much she could see because of her position as a faculty in her twenties and a non-tenure-track faculty member. Not having a tenure-track position means that faculty positions are particularly precarious and often based on student teaching evaluations. 

Price and Kerschbaum interviewed Megan who self identifies as blind. Megan noted that students often are puzzled by how much Megan can see because she uses a white cane, wears dark glassess outside, but she also write on the board. Megan noted she often can hear students in her classes asking each other if they know how much Megan can see, but that students do not ask Megan this question directly. Megan also noted that often individuals assume blindness means an individual exists in a world of total darkness, without taking into consideration residual vision or how other sensory information can help fill in a field of perception.

Example of Difference in Identification

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Price suggests that this difference between how Megan is identified by her students and self-identified, including students speculating to each other about her disability identity is a facet of crip spacetime because by speculating aloud her students are asserting a separation as if they and Megan are not in the same place whilst still being in the same physical space.

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