Representation Matters: Disabled Professorship and a Move Toward a Higher Standard of Accessibility in the Office and the Field

Summary

This is an abstract from the "What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While workplace affecting disabilities are covered by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), oftentimes universities struggle with how to accommodate faculty with disabilities. When conversations between faculty and chairpersons occur, they may cover only the bare minimum that must be acknowledged to maintain ADA compliance, yet true accessibility should go beyond merely being able to access one’s own office. Additionally, professional and academic archaeologists with disabilities have further complications when attempting to work in field situations which are not accessible due to distance, the physicality of the location, or the weather. This narrows the opportunities for a disabled archaeology faculty member, and truncates the contributions they would otherwise be completely capable of making to the discipline. This presentation will focus on two aspects of the current struggle for representation of disability within full time archaeology faculty: normalizing language surrounding accommodations, including addressing disability as a measure of inclusiveness and diversity in hiring practices, and what aspects of accessibility are practical to address in arranging, funding, and stocking fieldwork expeditions on local and national excavations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• What Have You Done For Us Lately?: Discrimination, Harassment, and Chilly Climate in Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23767