Dr. Shayda Kafai
Associate Professor
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Writer. Educator.
Welcome!
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Dr. Shayda Kafai (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Ethnic and Women's Studies Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.
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If you would like to invite Shayda for a speaking engagement, please email: ​
skafai[at]cpp[dot]edu
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Early Praise for Mad Scholars
"We have lots of personal experience, and lots of scholarship, showing us how ableist academia is and has always been. But this collection instead reveals the power and potential of disabled academics, who are already reshaping and reimagining higher education. This power is reflected in the diverse methods and forms across these twenty-three chapters; this potential can be harnessed by readers like you."
― Jay Dolmage, author of Disability Rhetoric
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​​Mad Scholars critiques academic culture’s entrenched ableism and sanism and shows how difficult—still—it is to be recognized as having a positive, credible, valuable Mad subjectivity. The diverse voices in this book give us pathways for leading with care, both for ourselves and others. They reimagine academia. They tell us that our institutions can do better. This is a collection we need.
― Elizabeth Brewer, Central Connecticut State University
Praise for Crip Kinship
“As a long-time admirer of Sins Invalid, I am grateful for Dr. Shayda Kafai’s Crip Kinship. Crip wisdom and disability justice are what we need right now. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the origins of disability justice.”
—Alice Wong, editor of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
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“Sins Invalid opened a portal that so many of the people who have taught me to live fully into the wholeness of my present have both held wide and come thru. This book invites a new generation through that portal of disability justice, to feel the powerful nature of us in our miraculous biodiversity and symbiosis, the love ethic in practice, the creative reclamation of our dignity, and the future that will unfold from our orgasmic yes. Shayda Kafai, in weaving this story, takes a place in the lineage of crip doulas who help us understand we are whole, and different, and perfect.”
—adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good​​
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Cover art by Kah Yangni
