Divergent Encounters with Normal: Are They Really So Different After All?

Abstract

In this paper, I will draw on Fiona Kumari Campbell's theorizing of ableism to illustrate the essential role of theory in transformative reflection. Such critical reflection can change how we, as disabled students, understand daily experiences of marginalization, and can encourage reconsideration of our responses to them. By sharing how I came to make sense of my own lived experience at university, I hope to make a substantive contribution to academic conversations about the lived complexities of being disabled at university and about our responses to ableism in our midst. Moreover, I aim to add to current understandings of Campbell's theorizing by translating the often complex language of theory through the analysis and storying of lived experience.