Research seminar: Octavian E. Robinson

Title: Crip Linguistics for the University Professor.

Seminar

Date:

Tuesday 7 October 2025

Time:

15.00 – 16.30

Location:

C307, Södra huset

Octavian E. Robinson is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for ASL and Deaf Equity at The Ohio State University.

 

Abstract:

Crip linguistics provides a justice-oriented framework for understanding language use through a critical disability lens.

Crip linguistics attends to the politics of bodily difference by considering how perceptions of the body affect how we perceive a person’s language use.

These perceptions result in critical assessments of competence, intelligence, and ability that shape educational, career, and social outcomes.

Given that these perceptions are central to the work of faculty charged with the responsibility of developing student communication competencies across multiple modalities (e.g. spoken, written, signed, alternative and augmented) of language, this seminar explores how faculty might better support divergent thinkers and body minds while carrying out the mission of the university in producing competent communicators.

A crip linguistics framework in university pedagogy provides us with a more expansive toolbox for fostering an inclusive learning environment. We will think through the question of how we, as educators, can actively practice a more inclusive pedagogy that places language at the center of our inquiry?

The seminar will be conducted in International Sign, and interpreted into spoken English and Swedish Sign Language.

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