Introduction: Naming Ourselves Mad Part One. Mad Pathways, Mad Exits 1. Don't Call it "Mental Health" - A Discussion on disability Euphemisms and Disability Community 2. My PhD Drove Me Crazy (but I Was Already Mad) 3. Complaint as a Maddening Practice (Moving through the University as a Mad Grad Student) 4. Rest as Feminist Disability Praxis, or How to Write While Flaring, Depressed, and totally Burned Out 5. Diary of a Mad Black Woman in the Academy Part Two. Researching the Self 6. I'm Too Crazy for a Job - Thoroughbreds, Fuckups, and Autistic, Mad, Disabled, Femme Grassroots Intellectual-Freedom Portals 7. Embrace the Lie - Seeking Truths through Reading, madly 8. The Madmotherscholar in Academia and Beyond 9. In-Cite - The Mad Possibility of Interethnography 10. The Subject is Mad Part Three. Disclosure and Disruptive Pedagogies 11. Mad Lyrics - Toward an Embodied, Community-Responsive Pedagogy of Care in Academia 12. Mad Pedagogy in Disabling Academia 13. Teaching for Mad Liberation: Crip Dreaming toward a Transformative Pedagogy of Madness 14. Learning and teaching Bad as Resistance: Queer Crip Pilpinx Bad Pedagogy 15. "The Deadly Space Between" Toward and Mad Pedagogy and Mad Methodology 16. Crazy Femme Pedagogies: Toward an Archive Part Four. Mad Imaginaries, from Kinship to Community 17. Mad Resilience, Mad Kinship: Alternative Responses to Student Mental Health Crises 18. Anchoring in Mad Solidarity 19 Mad Laughter: On Finding and Forming Graduate Communities through Memes 20. On Mad Advantage, Redux: Covering, Passing, Negotiating (in) Higher Education 21. Landing without Failing: The Fucking Blue Dots 22. Orienting toward Togetherness: A Mad Phenomenology
As universities rethink their approach to student and faculty mental health, Mad Scholar showcases academics who proudly embrace the label of the "mad scholar." In twenty-three essays from contributors working in nearly a dozen disciplines across three continents, the volume explores the infinite richness of neurodivergent scholars' lived experiences, centering their stories in opposition to hegemonic sanism and ableism in the academy. These essays, valuable to any "mad scholar" at any point in their career, highlight the challenges of simply existing within the traditional university model as well as showcase celebrations of community building, self-identification, and connection with students. A corrective for neurodivergent scholars too used to having their experiences and stories told for them, this collection examines how a more open-minded administrative approach to academics who identify at the intersection of various marginalized identities would be a boon both to students and faculty. The essays provide an opportunity to envision a more hopeful, inclusive, and optimistic view of university culture and pedagogy, while offering concrete steps and strategies that radically reimagine the current landscape. Mad Scholars boldly dreams of a better future for anyone who claims the label, seeking to find fellowship, accommodation, and acceptance both within and outside of academia.
Melanie Jones is a faculty member at Bard College in the Bard Prison Initiative program. She has a PhD in comparative literature, and her work has appeared in such journals as the Victorian Review. Shayda Kafai is assistant professor of ethnic and women's studies at California State Polytechnic University. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Lesbian Studies and Women's Studies Quarterly.