A powerful conversation about neurodiversity, neurodivergent scholarship, disability justice, immanent critique, the experiential and political aspects of disability and neurodiversity, and of course, magic.

Sara Maria Acevedo is a neurodivergent mestiza, activist scholar, educator and disability justice advocate born and raised in Colombia, South America. She has served as a Diversity and Disability Advocacy Fellow at California Institute of Integral Studies and is currently a Fellow in the Center for Writing and Scholarship. She’s also the co-founder of the National Coalition for Latinxs with Disablities and serves on the board of directors. Her current research explores activism as history making and qualitative collaborative research methods to challenge oppressive systems impinging on the right of disabled communities to produce cultural and political spaces of inherent value by and for themselves. Sara is currently exploring and documenting the politics of self-direction and self-governance across neurodivergent grassroots communities serving autistic and otherwise neurodivergent transitioning youth in the Bay Area. She utilizes activist ethnographic methods as a strategy to amplify the voices and lived experiences of disabled communities living oppressively at the intersections of race, class, gender expression, sexual orientation, religious practice, and political affiliation. Sara recently received an honorable mention for the Irving Zola award from the Society for Disability Studies for her paper, “Neuroqueering Compositon: Sensual Reflections on the Inconclusive Life of Thoughts,” which she reads from during our conversation, and I think will be a real treat for you all to hear. Sara is a doctoral candidate in the Anthropology and Social Change Program at CIIS, and both her pedagogy and scholarship as well as her grassroots work invite a re-figuration of disability as a vibrant political and cultural experience as opposed to a flat clinical diagnosis.

Notes:

A written transcript of this podcast will be available later today!

Sara Acevedo's piece, "Neuroqueering Composition" cannot be reproduced without her permission.

Scholars Sara cites during interview include: Deleuze and Guattari, Elizabeth Povinelli, Jasbir Puar, David Mitchell, Sharon Snyder, Shelley Tremain, Michel Foucault.