Dr. Samantha Cutrara:        Hi Geoffrey! Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Dr. Geoffrey Reaume:         Hi. You’re welcome.

SC:         I’m so excited for you to be able to bring your perspectives of being a historian in the field of critical disability studies to this conversation. So thank you so much.

GR:        You’re welcome. Thanks for inviting me. I look forward to participating. I’m glad you’re running this series as well.

SC:         Yeah, it’s been really great – and I can imagine that this conversation will be no less amazing.

So let’s start with our first question. And in the first question, maybe we can kind of segue into an introduction about critical disabilities studies and what it’s like to be a historian in this field. So the first question I ask people is if they think about history any differently because of this moment, because I have. I think that there’s so much room here to think about so many things about history differently.

Have you thought about history any differently in this moment? And how does your perspective of being a historian in the field of critical disability studies shape that?

GR:        Well, yes, I have in some ways because it’s been such an astonishing few weeks, hasn’t it? It’s been quite astonishing. March was – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a month with such colossal changes all over the world so quickly and so catastrophically. I mean, millions of people lost their jobs in a matter of a few weeks in Canada and all over the world and so many people having to be quarantined on a scale that we’ve never seen before in our world.

So it’s stunning. All of this I think makes you realize history is not just the past, it’s what’s going on right now.

And a lot of people are experiencing what disabled people have experienced on an individual level in their own communities throughout modern history. This is now being experienced by a lot of people who don’t consider themselves disabled. So it’s in some ways, it’s in a mass experience of disablement.

A lot of people have taken for granted things that you can walk down the street, for example. Of course, not all disabled people can walk or get out. Some people can. Before COVID most of us took for granted just going to the park or going out to the cafe or what have you. And, of course, that’s no longer the case; it is so irresponsible anymore with social distancing. Many disabled people, even if they could get out, often couldn’t get into the cafe because it’s not accessible.

So a lot of things that aren’t accessible to the vast majority of people now, in many cases, haven’t been accessible to disabled people in the past and in the present as well. So in other words, it’s a mass vulnerability that lots of disabled people experience all the time. And I think that’s something that, as a historian, I think that’s worth reflecting upon.

SC:         Yeah, that’s really interesting and I think really powerful. And maybe this moment can help us understand history as challenged through the work of critical disability studies. Scholars, historians, can help us understand the historicity of isolation, and access, and vulnerability that disabled people have always faced as a way to understand how we can challenge this notion of what it means to be disabled in a society.

GR:        Yes, very much so. And in fact, that so many people are also being scapegoated as the other, so to speak.

SC:         Yeah. Yes.

GR:        Of course, we know the xenophobia that has happened, particularly towards people in East Asian descent and people that are Chinese particularly, and the racism that has occurred and being scapegoated or people being seen as a burden in another context. Disabled people have historically been categorized as a burden. And we’ve seen great concerns from the disability community generally about being seen as a potentially not as worth having life-saving supports in the medical emergency if they have COVID-19. Will they get a respirator or will a disabled person get a respirator and not, depending on the nature of their disability and the health care workers attitude towards that person with disability?

There’s been pushback. A lot of disabled activists and allies have critiqued a lot of these ideas. There was ideas around deciding who could or couldn’t get certain kinds of health care treatment if they had COVID-19 and a lot of activists critiqued this and wrote to the federal and provincial governments and federal provincial governments around early to mid-April responded, of course, that they wouldn’t not prioritize disabled people. So the government here in Canada, and other governments, have come out and said that they will make sure disabled people aren’t left by the wayside. And that’s an important change in that sense from some of the previous draft policies that were being circulated.

SC:         Something that’s come up in a lot of the videos is how this moment has really unearthed these structures that work or don’t work. Most of the time, they don’t work. And this notion of xenophobia, I think also it’s identifying who we understand to be people in our country, to be people in our nation as a kind of worthy for treatment, right?

Because that, to me, really highlights the fact that people can be like, ‘well, if I don’t have a disabled person in my family, like those people can get sick; whereas I want to protect my own.’ And this notion of ‘my own and others’ can be so much more broad, because this moment is like unearthing the structures that we wouldn’t have articulated before.

And I think what I’m hearing from you is the importance of – or what I’m gathering from you as a working historian – the importance of using history to be able to challenge that, but also to rally with activists to force change in the those ideas, even if we haven’t articulated them.

GR:        Yes, that’s right. So the whole issue of scapegoating the other. If we can go back to the middle ages, Jews were “blamed” for causing the black death in 1348 to ‘51 in Medieval Europe. During the Black Death, another plague, which killed one-third to half of the population of Western Europe at that time, and some Jews were burned at the stake. And so we know this prejudice bigoted attitude goes back a long time and it’s literally caused their lives, who have been othered.

And of course, we know about the anti-Asian immigrant attitude. That’s a long history as well. It’s certainly well before this period, there were different examples of contagious diseases, outbreaks in different parts of North America. For example, in Calgary 1892 and in Chinatown in San Francisco as well in the late 19th century, where Chinese people were scapegoated and, in some cases, even attacked.

So these racist prejudices come up again and again. And of course, disabled people are very much have been part of that being scapegoated, based very much on the eugenic ideas that disabled people aren’t “as productive” as other people. So whole idea of who is productive and who isn’t, who was worthwhile a citizen and who isn’t, is something that factors into a lot into these prejudices and, of course, are often based on completely inaccurate ideas as well. Disabled people can be as productive as anyone else.

But also, notions of productivity. We have to be careful even someone who is not considered ‘productive’ in the typical economic sense under a capitalist system; thinking of people worthwhile of contribution and place in society as someone who doesn’t. You don’t have to be someone who writes articles or sits in an office or who works in a factory to be worthwhile person. It’s very important to emphasize that we should not have economic factors as the ultimate litmus test of whether somebody belongs in society and is worthwhile contributors to society.

SC:         I also think about students, and I think about classrooms, in this moment. The push to produce versus being venerable and needing greater access to learn. And I think about how this will impact, how in what ways that we will teach history after this moment. Do you think the way we will teach history will change after this moment? Do you think that the notion of vulnerability that we are all feeling right now to various degrees, definitely not equally, do you think this notion of vulnerability will shift the way that we teach history? Do you think it should?

GR:        Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I don’t have a definite answer. I mean, of course obviously, one practical sense, it’s changing for everybody teaching by being on remote distance teaching, for example. But in terms of how we conceptualize what we’re teaching is very important. And the whole issue of people experiencing of mental health issues and anxiety, are hugely important because people are experiencing it right now and will be experiencing long into the future and it will only increase as the uncertainty increases.

So the supports that we have for our students, as well as faculty and staff who were engaged in all of this effort to teach differently, is something that we have to think about and try to do as equitably as possible. I think part of it is that we’re going to have to understand that if we’re going to be doing more remote teaching as a result of this pandemic, we need to make far greater accommodations for our students, and for faculty as well, in the way we teach this. And we can’t be just the standard teaching process.

At York University, for example, we have a standard three-hour class. I know it’s different at different universities. But I think that for a lot of people, they won’t be able to teach and learn in a block like that online. There is childcare for one thing or elder care, taking care of loved ones, or taking care of oneself. People, whether they have COVID-19 or any other health condition. If you’re at home, it’s not as easy to separate the classroom from home now, is it? Because it’s right there.

And so, how we teach it is I think a way of trying to bring history into the home and talking about how we think about the fact that this remote teaching is being done to a greater extent than ever before of these reasons because of the emergency pandemic. But what happened in the past, in the flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920, which was a worldwide catastrophe as we all know, they didn’t have remote teaching, obviously.

SC:         No, their internet access was so poor then.

GR:        Yeah. And for some reason, I don’t know. I can’t understand why.

So, they didn’t have what we have, obviously. And so this school is just to close. They have done something at home if they had the resources, but you could certainly have seen how in the flu pandemic about hundred years ago, people would have lost all that period of education that children would have lost because their parents were busy if they did have work. If they were able to go to work, they could have been just try to survive or just didn’t have the skills to teach a child/children or they were too busy with seven or eight or 10 children, because their family is generally intend to be bigger than now.

So we have to remember that when we think of what we’re trying to do as teachers, now we can try to think of how people cope with past pandemics in the family unit or in extended families or in communities, but still figuring out things as we go along. And so, I think it’s a learning curve as we go how to teach more effectively and how to engage students, and we have to figure out how to change, and to adapt, and to try to make this work in a better way for everyone. And so that’s something I think that we all need to figure out including myself.

So basically, my answer is I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out as we go on, and I’ll continue to think about it, as some of the others are, and I’m reading stuff online about pedagogy to better ways of teaching online as well as we do this. So it’s a question mark about the future.

SC:         I think that is so valid. I think it’s a question mark for so many of us. And because it happened so quickly, and so many of us care so much for our students that we, I think that was this expectation in all of our individual heads that we needed to make it perfect right away and, like, seamless. And of course, that was never going to be the case.

GR:        No.

SC:         And for me, I think about what you said earlier about vulnerability. Like, we could start by teaching history from this place of vulnerability to say, “What’s going on? Let’s figure out how this is the same and different from moments in the past and how they dealt with it to learn about, like, quarantine suits. And how they worked or how they didn’t work.”

I think starting from a place of vulnerability can make us all better educators, but I think also is more honest to the moment because whether or not we know the technology or not, I think we all can agree that teaching is about this relationship between teacher and student in a way that brings out the best in what a student could learn from the information that the professor has and feels it’s important to share that moment.

GR:        Yes, that’s right. I think, and that’s a very important point about our own vulnerabilities as teachers and the student’s vulnerabilities who are undergoing so much stress in their daily lives. And being online a lot – glaring into a computer can be so stressful. And so we have to take account of that as well and interacting a lot on platforms where we haven’t previously been, most of us haven’t previously been so used to. So all of these are things we all need to take into account as we deal with the COVID-19.

I think as a historian, looking back at the histories of disabled people and the experiences of mad people – I teach about history of people with disabilities and mad people’s history – all of these anxieties that people are experiencing now on a mass scale is something that I think we need to place in the context of how many people have endured this in their individual lives in these different histories. So it’s something we’re all trying to figure out as we go through this monumental change in everyone’s life, I think.

SC:         Well, I think about what you said earlier about how this moment is highlighting things that disabled people have faced for so long, things like access, isolation, and vulnerability because those things we can start our teaching from that moment to ensure that our students are able to access materials in different ways.

Like, I teach a small class right now and even though all the students attend, I still record the course so that they can watch it later so that they can access it differently. We are still running the course and having discussions so that they don’t feel isolated even when, or especially when, they don’t feel like they’re going to be successful in the course anymore, but just to stay connected. And to start from that base for vulnerability, we do a check-in every class just to be like, “How are you feeling? I know this is weird,” you know? But we’re starting with the place of we are all venerable but welcome and part of this space.

GR:        Yeah. Yes, I think that’s very true around issues of feeling like you’re a full citizen, for example.

Some disabled people have not been made to feel a full citizen. There’s a book by a disability study scholar at the University of Victoria, Michael Prince called Absent Citizens. It talks about how disabled people have been excluded from citizenship so very often, and he’s referring to Canadian context. But it’s very true. I mean, I think what you’re pointing out is being included. Like, do you really feel as much part of the course if you’re just online and not in the classroom? Or to what extent can some people may feel better able to engage online, on the other hand? Some people may feel more comfortable engaging in the classroom than online. So all of these things are different in different contexts.

That brings all sorts of issues about disabled people engaging in research who often have these barriers that they experience in their day-to-day lives that are now being experienced by large numbers of people as never before.

And so again, that brings back, disablement is being experienced in different context, in different ways, but there’s large scale disablement, I think, as never before. It’s not equal, and I’m not saying it’s the same for everyone. It’s not for all sorts of reasons around class, race, gender, and ability, but nevertheless, there is a huge amount of vulnerability. I keep coming back to that word that people haven’t experienced.

SC:         Yeah, I would come back to that word too. And this notion of disablement, yes, it’s in no way equal, but it can be this opening to be able to help us think about things differently. About history differently, but also our society differently. So this leads to the last question.

I mean, we talked about a lot of these things already, but the idea of this video series, it’s called “Imagining a New ‘We’” because I found in history classes, specifically K-12 history classes, there can be this, like, a way to underlie this ‘us versus them’ mentality. And so, the idea of the video blog generally was to challenge that. How can we challenge this notion of us versus them? How can we think more creatively and collaboratively about a we together?

And so, as a way to end, can you comment at all? Do you think the ways that we can or should imagine a different, more inclusive, less other we will shift and change after this moment?

GR:        Well, I would hope that on the most basic level, more people will understand the need for accommodations. That’s been a challenge for many disabled students and faculty and staff who’ve requested accommodation. And somewhere along the chain of command, so to speak, of whether it’d be a professor who is responding to a student or a higher level administrator who is responding to a faculty member of staff is not as sympathetic.

I’m not saying that’s the case always. Of course, it’s not always the case. There are many people who are supportive. But there are many cases where you will hear of where there’s attitudinal barrier still there that impacts people in other ways as well, of course. The idea of: “Oh no, they should just do the course. If we give them accommodation, they will have ‘special privileges’ compared to somebody else who doesn’t have the accommodation.”

Of course, that often completely ignores the fact that some people, for example, require more time to get their work done for very legitimate reasons related to their disabilities. Physical disabilities, mental health disabilities, and cognitive disabilities as well, and our sensory disabilities, as well as the fact that people, of course, have all sorts of things going on in their lives that require extra time. That is very important. Childcare being one obviously, work schedules. Or elder care as well is very important.

So all of this brings back to the point, that I would hope that there would be more understanding of accommodation for large numbers of people and that includes, by the way, people who can’t do distance learning.

SC:         Well, even the word ‘accommodation’ insinuates there is a normal standard that everyone should be looking up to, right?

GR:        Yeah. Exactly.

SC:         That you are now being accommodated. Something is being accommodated. And I think that this can help us push what we consider normal in a way to be more inclusive about what that might look like for all of us moving forward.

You’ve brought up so many really interesting elements to this conversation. I want to thank you so much. This has been really, really awesome. I’ve really, really enjoyed it. Will you be able to share with us some links and things like that if people wanted to engage in some activism and be an ally or be an activist in this field to help support that?

GR:        Yeah, sure. I’ll forward some to you very shortly if you’d like to know where people can look, particularly around COVID-19, but also more generally to students. That would be very good. I’m glad to do that. And thank you for inviting me, I’ve enjoyed it.

“Ottawa’s pandemic plan should do more for people with disabilities” from The Toronto Star: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contr…​

The COVID-19 Disability Advisory Group from the Government of Canada: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-s…​

Michael Prince. (2009) Absent Citizens: Disability Politics and Policy in Canada: https://utorontopress.com/ca/absent-c…

6 ways to support students with disabilities during COVID-19 school closures by Elizabeth Barker: https://www.nwea.org/blog/2020/6-ways…​

The Critical Disability Studies graduate program at York University: https://cds.gradstudies.yorku.ca/​

Reaume, G. (2019). Creating Mad People’s History as a University Credit Course since 2000. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 31(1), 22-39. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a…​

Reaume, G. (2006). Mad people’s history. Radical History Review, 2006(94), 170-182. https://bit.ly/2SG9nHc

SC:         Oh, it’s been so amazing. Like I said, I really think that it helps develop this conversation out, and thank you for bringing your perspectives, and your experience, and your expertise to this conversation.

GR:        You’re welcome. Thanks again for asking me. All the best.

SC:         All right, have a great day.

GR:        Okay, you too. Bye.