Call for Zine Submissions: Disability, Accessibility & Teaching and Learning @Mac

** Summer 2022: We have an updated call for zine participation that can be found here: Call for Zine Submissions: Dis/orientation: Navigating accessibility in teaching and learning**

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Current and former McMaster students with lived experiences of disability, disablement, inaccessibility, and/or ableism are invited to contribute to a zine on Disability, Accessibility & Teaching and Learning at McMaster University.

We understand ‘disability’ as a broad umbrella term for diverse experiences of difference, including people who may identify as living with a physical, learning, sensory, developmental, and/or mental health disability or chronic pain, as well as people who identify as disabled, chronically ill, sick, immunocompromised, D/deaf, hard of hearing, Mad, in recovery, and/or neurodivergent.

 Submission deadline extended to: June 1st, 2021

Find the submission form here.

Zine submissions should engage with one or more of the following prompts:

• What has it been like to learn at McMaster University while negotiating disability/ (in)accessibility? What specific experiences stand out to you?
• How have you been impacted by the barriers you have faced?
• What have you done to negotiate these barriers either individually and/or with others?
• What has respectful support looked and felt like, or what might this look and feel like?
• How have experiences with formal or informal groups of disabled students been meaningful to you?
• What has disabled student organizing or advocacy looked like and meant for you?
• What do you want the future of accessible and disability-inclusive teaching and learning to look like? What needs to change?
• What recommendations do you have for faculty, teaching assistants, and other educational staff?

Format/Genre

The zine welcomes individual and group submissions in textual (words) and/or visual formats that can be printed. Formats may include, but are not limited to:

• Creative arts (e.g., collage, comics, graphic design, drawing, painting, photography).
• Literary arts (e.g., dialogues/interviews, essays, poetry, lyrics, reflections, satire, short fiction, theatre scripts).
• Other (e.g., lists, recipes, games, puzzles…)

There is a maximum of 1500 words (for literary pieces) or up to 3 letter-sized pages (for visual pieces) per submission, though we especially welcome shorter pieces! Our goal is to include submissions from a wide variety of individuals/groups and to accept as many as we can.

Authors of accepted pieces will be asked to provide material for accessibility purposes at a later time and/or consulted in the preparation of these components (e.g., alternative text for images).

Timelines, Submission Instructions, and Honoraria

Timelines

• June 1, 2021: Zine submissions due
• July 15, 2021: Correspondence with contributors regarding the status of their piece
• Summer 2021: Zine publication and circulation

Submission Instructions

We will accept submissions via our Author Bio Information and Submission Form.

NOTE: submission via this form requires a Google account. If you encounter any difficulties or have any questions, please contact us at MacDisZn@mcmaster.ca.

• Please submit visual pieces as .jpeg, .png, or other common, non-proprietary, image file format.
• We cannot accept physical art pieces. Please provide either pictures or a scan of the work in one of the formats described above.
• We will also accept submissions (e.g., YouTube videos) via QR code.
• Please submit text-based pieces as a .docx or .rtf file.

In addition to uploading your submission, you’ll be asked to:

• Provide a brief bio of up to 100 words (written in the third person) including the name under which you would like to be published (e.g., all or part of your name, a penname, a group name, or ‘anonymous’).
• Complete a brief author form (e.g., indicating your program and years of study at McMaster and graduation year if applicable, email address for contact purposes, etc.)

Honoraria

• Thanks to support from the Student Success Centre’s Career Access Professional Services Program (CAPS), up to 30 current students and alumni from 2011-2020 are eligible to receive an honorarium of $125 for any pieces chosen for publication in the zine. Other contributors whose pieces are chosen for publication will be eligible to request an honorarium (amount dependent on budget and overall number of accepted submissions), provided by a grant from the Arts Research Board, McMaster University.

Potential Examples

We are looking for submissions that cover a variety of topics. Some examples of different forms and content could include, but are NOT limited to, the following:

• A series of 6 photos representing your learning experiences as a disabled student, with brief accompanying stories/captions
• Photos of a sculpture representing your experience of disabled student community
• A brief article on a disability-related student initiative at McMaster (e.g., a description of how an individual student or group of students came together and what you sought to accomplish)
• A comic strip / graphic telling of a disability-related initiative you participated in at McMaster
• Photo edits pointing out inaccessibility in learning environments at McMaster
• A poem on things you wish your instructors knew about the importance of accessible education
• A short fictional story about what you hope accessibility will look like in teaching and learning at McMaster in the year 2050
• A drawing of your dream future for neurodivergent students at McMaster

Please note that the examples provided here are intended to offer a starting point for submission concepts. Submissions do not need to adhere to these themes or specific mediums.

Plans for the Zine

The zine will be published open access and circulated widely to students, staff, and faculty at McMaster University through the MacPherson Institute, Equity and Inclusion Office, and campus partners (e.g, as part of the MacPherson’s 50^th anniversary activities; embedded in the university’s required Accessible Education training for faculty, teaching assistants, and other instructional staff; on the Accessibility Hub website; as part of McMaster’s Annual Accessibility and Disability Inclusion Update).

The Zine Team will be conducting some research about engagement with and the ‘impact’ of the magazine (e.g., through surveys/focus groups of its readers) and the ways in which it might support the advancement of equity and accessibility on campus.

Zine Background

Uncovering Histories of Disabled Student Organizing at McMaster

Students with disabilities have been attending and advocating for greater accessibility at McMaster University for a long time, with accounts appearing in the Silhouette newspaper by at least the 1960s (and probably much earlier – once we’re able to access the archives again, we’ll go looking!). From what we have found thus far, disability-related clubs and groups at McMaster have included the following:

• Handicapped Students’ Union (~1974)
• McMaster Friends of the Mentally Challenged (1989)
• WINGS (Wisdom, Integrity, Networking, Grappling and Support) (1990s)
• McMaster Special Needs Association, renamed the McMaster Disability Advocacy Group (MDAG) (~1990s-2000s)
• Mental Health Support Group (~2005-2010)
• School of Social Work Disability Action Group (2008+)
• Hamilton Mad Students’ Collective (2012-2016)
• Student Accessibility Forum (2012-2014)
• Breaking Barriers (~2013)
• Maccess Student Network for Students with Disabilities (2014-2015)
• MSU Maccess (2016+)

This zine project, led by disabled students and alumni (some now working as staff), seeks to uncover and document the labour and legacy of these disabled student initiatives and others (individual and collective; formal and informal) we haven’t heard of yet. “Groups” need not be official – even a small social network of disabled students is a form of student organizing!

Disabled student contributions have been vital to McMaster’s history of teaching and learning, resulting in greater accessibility and disability inclusion in the classroom, curricula, and on campus. As such, this zine project aligns with other work to mark 50 years of teaching and learning stories at McMaster in commemoration of the 50^th anniversary of McMaster’s teaching and learning centre.

Developing Disabled Student Resources to Inform Teaching and Learning

This zine builds off of prior work by disabled students at McMaster to share their voices, including stories printed in the Silhouette newspaper, the Hamilton Mad Students’ Collective’s 2014 zine on Mad student experiences, and Open ACCESSibility: An illustrated story of disability advocacy @McMaster created by Michelle Sayles in 2018 based on interviews with disabled students, staff, and faculty. Some of these pieces have been successfully integrated into McMaster’s mandatory accessible education training for educators. Our zine-in-production will further document and share the experiences and wisdom of disabled students and their hopes and visions for the future of teaching and learning at McMaster.

The project is additionally inspired by a partnership at the University of the Arts London between their teaching and learning centre and student union to co-design zines to inform curriculum and education. We’re excited about the possibility of zines and other creative formats for building student community and supporting teaching and learning by sharing disabled students’ experiences and insights with student peers, as well as faculty, teaching assistants, and other educational staff. We wonder, what might the gathering of student voices through ‘zines’ do that more conventional trainings, tip sheets, or professional development for educators might not?

Collaborators and Contact Information

Zine Team Members

Contact the Zine Team at MacDisZn@mcmaster.ca with any questions, to request a Word/PDF version of this Call for Submissions, or to chat through any initial ideas and whether they would fit within the scope of the zine.

• Alise de Bie, Vikita Mehta, Dani Pryke, Evonne Syed, Tanisha Warrier, and Emunah Woolf (MacPherson Institute)
• Kate Brown (Equity and Inclusion Office)

Sponsors

We are grateful for financial support provided by McMaster University:

• MacPherson Institute’s Student Partners Program
• Student Success Centre’s Career Access Professional Services Program (CAPS)
• Arts Research Board.

** Image credit: LQ – from This Insane Life: MadStudents zine, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11375/25051