UIC to begin disability art, culture and humanities program

From the University of Illinois at Chicago. Way to go Carrie!

“We need to liven up this place,” says Carrie Sandahl (pictured in red shirt) as she glances at a quiet office hallway in the Disability, Health and Social Policy building at Roosevelt and Ashland.

“This is an old clinic and it has that feel. We need to bring some life in here and shake it up a bit,” says Sandahl, associate professor of disability and human development.

Few are better prepared for this task. Sandahl taught, mentored, directed and participated with students at Florida State University in plays and other artistic performances before joining UIC’s faculty in 2009.

“We’d rehearse musicals in the hallway. Activity spilled out all over because we didn’t have much room,” she says.

Sandahl’s goal of livening up her workspace begins this term as she starts the program on disability art, culture and humanities — a specialty field for incoming Ph.D. students in disability studies, a professional degree UIC pioneered.

She’ll also oversee creation of what she calls an “administrate home” at UIC for the Chicago Bodies of Work festival of disability arts and culture, last held in April 2006 and planned again for 2012.

Raised in the small town of Hood River, Ore., about 60 miles east of Portland, Sandahl caught the theater bug at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash.

A theater major, she got involved in as many aspects of departmental productions as she could.

But her work didn’t include “playing the ingénue roles.” Born with the congenital condition sacral agenesis, which causes mobility impairment and short stature, she played a variety of roles, including cross-gender and characters with disabilities.

“It was clear my disability was being used to make meaning — but I wasn’t sure I wanted to become an icon of pity,” she says.

“I felt it was serving the narrative in a way I didn’t agree with. So I developed this consciousness.”

Realizing that she wasn’t prepared to live a “starving actor’s” life of waiting tables between performing roles, she turned to an academic career. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was encouraged to pursue study of disability in the humanities — a field starved of original research.

“Nobody was writing about it,” she recalls. “I felt kind of adrift. Who’s talking about this? Where are the other actors with disabilities?”

Sandahl conducted groundbreaking research in the field as a graduate student in Madison, teaching courses and creating new performance pieces.

She met other artists with disabilities and attended seminal conferences such as “This/Ability,” held at the University of Michigan in 1995.

“I hadn’t previously met other artists with disabilities, then, all of a sudden, I was surrounded by them. We all talked about the same things, observations and experiences.”

Sandahl met Carol Gill, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder at the Michigan conference. Mitchell and Snyder are former UIC faculty members, now at Temple University. Gill, now associate professor of disability and human development, has since collaborated with Sandahl on a National Endowment for the Arts-funded project that analyzed the barriers and opportunities for persons with disabilities who pursue arts careers.

Sandahl taught at Florida State for 11 years, but found herself traveling to Chicago frequently to attend arts events, guest-teach and participate in the 2006 Bodies of Work festival.

“I was up here all the time,” she says. “Chicago’s a hub of disability art, culture and activism. I got very interested in disability politics.

“Civil rights movements were very strong in Chicago. There are ground-breaking artists here.”

When a faculty position opened at UIC, Sandahl was a natural fit. She brought with her a long list of projects that she and her students will tackle.

“I’m interested in how disability art and culture contribute to research and knowledge about people with disabilities — a critical analysis of the work of artists with disabilities and what it tells us about the disability experience in the United States.”

Other study subjects include contributions of the arts, culture and humanities to the civil rights movement — how the work of artists changed attitudes and contributed to policy change.

Sandahl hopes to document the stories and histories of artists who played significant roles in the disability civil rights movement in Chicago and elsewhere around the country.

“These and other questions haven’t really been pursued. Just as other minority groups have gone back and found their histories, we can do that. There’s no shortage of things to do in this field.”