About the Journal

York University’s Critical Disability Studies Graduate Program is happy to welcome you to our journal, Critical Disability Discourses/Discours critiques dans le champ du handicap (CDD-DCCH). CDD is a bilingual, interdisciplinary journal, publishing articles that focus on experiences of disability from a critical perspective.

CDD was conceived by, and is managed by, graduate students, under the auspices of the Critical Disability Studies Graduate Program. Our objective is to create an academic space where emerging disability studies researchers will make valuable contributions to the expanding field of critical disability studies.

For more information about the Critical Disability Studies Graduate program, please visit our website at: https://www.yorku.ca/gradstudies/cds/.

Focus and Scope

CDD solicits manuscripts from graduate students, postgraduates, or early career disability studies scholars entrenched in disability matters. CDD is the publishing home for such up-and-coming scholars making their first foray into peer-review publishing. Some universities’ disability studies programs and courses emphasize the applied side of disability research, while several others privilege humanistic, theoretical, and arts-based approaches, CDD celebrates this spectrum. However, CDD’s scope does not involve endorsing positivist, solely medicalized perspectives, tragedy models of disability, or pathologizing discourses of debility and disablement.

Journal topics share in common a dedication to anti-oppression and social justice. It is the intention of the journal to bring disability-related issues to mainstream scholastic conversations by promoting and publishing arguments that critically assess disabling social conditions. Discourse about disability is arguably not taken seriously enough in mainstream academic circles; without theoretical backing, it is difficult to effect social change. For CDD’s team, the journal is part of a greater effort to bring disability to the table and to redress discrimination.

We welcome submissions derived from graduate coursework, theses, or dissertations. We publish articles on disability themes across education, ethics, sociology, politics, health, human rights, social work, history, culture, film and media studies, business, war, conflict, and human displacement studies. This list is not intended to be exhaustive. If you are unsure if your article subject fits the mandate of CDD, please email abstracts to the Managing Editor at gregproc@yorku.ca.

Journal Sponsorship

Critical Disability Discourses is published under the auspices and with the support of the faculty and staff of the Critical Disability Studies department in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at York University, as well as with the support and solidarity of the Critical Disability Studies Student Association (CDSSA).

Sources of Support

Abilities is a cross-disability lifestyle magazine that is widely distributed in Canada. CDD is promoted on EnableLinker, the online newsletter.