•  26
    Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.
  •  7
    The Import of Critical Phenomenology for Theorizing Disability
    Journal of Philosophy of Disability 3 116-146. 2023.
    In this paper, I explore the claim that phenomenological accounts grounded in the lived experiences of those most tangibly impacted by social norms related to ability can provide crucial correctives and supplements to the existing philosophical literature on disability. After situating discussions of the body within disability theory and debates over the impairment/disability distinction in philosophy of disability more specifically, I argue that extant models are inadequate for theorizing subje…Read more
  •  657
    The Disability Bioethics Reader (edited book)
    Routledge. 2022.
    Introductory and advanced textbooks in bioethics focus almost entirely on issues that disproportionately affect disabled people and that centrally deal with becoming or being disabled. However, such textbooks typically omit critical philosophical reflection on disability, lack engagement with decades of empirical and theoretical scholarship spanning the social sciences and humanities in the multidisciplinary field of disability studies, and avoid serious consideration of the history of disabilit…Read more
  •  16
    This dissertation contributes to the development of philosophy of disability by drawing on disability studies, feminist philosophy, phenomenology, and philosophy of biology in order to contest epistemic and ontological assumptions about disability within biomedical ethics as well as within philosophical work on the body, demonstrating how philosophical inquiry is radically transformed when experiences of disability are taken seriously. In the first two chapters, I focus on epistemological and on…Read more
  •  253
    Applying Merleau-Ponty's Account of Perceptual Practices to Teaching on Disability
    Florida Philosophical Review 13 (1): 14-28. 2013.
    This paper provides suggestions for educators who have a desire to learn about, or are already committed to, challenging ableism and disablism. As philosophy teachers, we have the opportunity to facilitate student reflection regarding disability, which puts students in a position to make decisions about whether to retain their habitual ways of comporting themselves toward disabled people or to begin the process of forming new perceptual practices. I contend that existential phenomenology, as for…Read more
  •  54
    Epistemic Oppression and Ableism in Bioethics
    Hypatia 35 (4): 714-732. 2020.
    Disabled people face obstacles to participation in epistemic communities that would be beneficial for making sense of our experiences and are susceptible to epistemic oppression. Knowledge and skills grounded in disabled people's experiences are treated as unintelligible within an ableist hermeneutic, specifically, the dominant conception of disability as lack. My discussion will focus on a few types of epistemic oppression—willful hermeneutical ignorance, epistemic exploitation, and epistemic i…Read more
  •  61
    Missing Phenomenological Accounts: Disability Theory, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, and Being an Amputee
    International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 11 (2): 83-111. 2018.
    Phenomenology provides a method for disability theorists to describe embodied subjectivity lacking within the social model of disability. Within the literature on body integrity identity disorder, dominant narratives of disability are influential, individual bodies are considered in isolation, and experiences of disabled people are omitted. Research on BIID tends to incorporate an individualist ontology. In this article, I argue that Merleau-Ponty's conceptualization of “being in the world,” whi…Read more
  •  30
    Thinking Critically about Disability in Biomedical Ethics Courses
    American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy 1 82-97. 2015.
    Several studies have shown that nondisabled people—especially healthcare professionals—tend to judge the quality of life of disabled people to be much lower than disabled people themselves report. In part, this is due to dominant narratives about disability. Teachers of biomedical ethics courses have the opportunity to help students to think critically about disability. This may involve interrogating our own assumptions, given the pervasiveness of ableism. This article is intended to facilitate …Read more