In this email, the second of three celebratory SWR emails I’m sending in the second half of 2026, I am beyond excited to share out Disability, Access, and the Teaching of Writing (DATW). The DATW Collective is a group of nine teacher-scholars–Stephanie K. Wheeler, Tracy Ann Morse, Brenda Jo Brueggemann, Molly E. Ubbesen, Craig A. Meyer, Elizabeth Brewer, Lauren Obermark, Bre Garrett, and Dev K. Bose–who have worked over years to bring this project to life, modelling a sustainable, collaborative process that centered an ethic of care and a commitment to supporting members of the collaboration through all parts of the process.
This project emerged out of the need to update a nearly 20-year-old groundbreaking book, Disability and the Teaching of Writing, released as a free sourcebook in 2008 by Bedford/St. Martin’s. DATW rethinks and revisits every aspect of that earlier book to explore current conversations about what it means to enact transformative access– an invitation to “rethink narrow access assumptions and instead reframe and invest in access as a transformation that everyone should contribute to, participate in, and learn with and through” (p. 12)–in writing classrooms, in one-with-one work with students, in our writing programs, and with our colleagues and fellow instructors.
Importantly, as part of this commitment to access, DATW is available through SWR’s partnership with the WAC Clearinghouse, which has enabled us to publish one book a year in simultaneous print and open-access formats. You can read the book online, download a .PDF copy of the book, and assign individual chapters or the entire book in your teaching and research in all kinds of ways. If you’d like a physical copy of the book (I am still someone who very much loves the tactility of a physical book, and who reads better on paper than on a screen), you can order a copy of the book anywhere books are sold – this is for me a book I want to have on the resource shelf in my writing program suite for anyone to check out and spend time with while lingering in the suite, talking with fellow instructors, or just waiting to use the copier.
If you are teaching a writing course this coming year, if you are mentoring graduate instructors or directing a writing program, or if you teach a practicum or composition theory course for graduate students, consider assigning all or part(s) of this book! Below are some highlights to check out.
- The book’s four main sections are “Thinking with Transformative Access,” “Disability Justice in the Classroom and Beyond,” “Scenes, Stories, and Practices of Access,” “Accessible Writing Program Administration and Teacher Training,” and “Rethinking ‘Normal’ in and after the Pandemic Era.”
- Chapters are short, engaging, and ready to put in front of new and experienced teachers alike. I read the book cover to cover, but chapters can be selected, assigned, or read in any combination or sequence according to needs and interests.
- At the end of each chapter are suggestions for reflection, practice, or discussion, as well as connections to other chapters across the book.
- Authors include Christina Cedillo, Ada Hubrig, Devon Pham, T. Wesley, Olivia Tracy, Leanne Toshiko Simpson, J.W. Hammond, Jamila M. Kareem, Kristin Bennett, Amy Reed, Marion Quirici, Cassandra Hall, Patricia A. Dunn, Jessie Male, Chad Iwertz Duffy, Julie Paulson, Janelle Chu Capwell Giles, Giuliana Weiss, Sara N. Beam, Tara Wood, Matt Dowell, Molly E. Ubbesen, Layli Maria Miron, Amy Cicchino, Ella R. Browning, Melissa Nicolas, and Sonya Huber.
Image Description: Disability, Access, and the Teaching of Writing is propped up on a bookshelf.
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Stephanie L. Kerschbaum (she/her/hers)
Professor of English
Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric
Core Faculty, Disability Studies Program
Signs of Disability (2022, NYU Press, available in print and open-access)
University of Washington
A-011F Padelford Hall
Box 354330
Seattle, WA 98195-4330
kersch
My zoom room