504 and Beyond: Disability Politics and the Black Panther Party
Date and Time: Monday, November 10, 2025; 2:30 - 4:00 pm
Location: Online
Collaborators: Black Studies, Department of Gender Studies, School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Centre for Teaching and Learning
Drawing from the book, Black Disability Politics, this talk will detail the Black Panther Party’s involvement in the 1977 504 Sit-in and discuss it as a historical example of how Black cultural workers have engaged with disability as a political issue in ways that have sometimes been obscured in Black studies and disability studies alike.
Dr. Sami Schalk is a professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined (2018) and Black Disability Politics (2022), both available open access from Duke University Press. Dr. Schalk’s research focuses on disability, race and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Schalk writes for mainstream outlets and makes art as a form of pleasure activism. Her current research project focuses on the creation and impact of pleasure spaces for multiply marginalized people. &Բ;
- Schalk, S. D. Black Disability Politics; Duke University Press: Durham, 2022. . &Բ;
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Schalk, S. D. Bodyminds Reimagined : (Dis)Ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction; Duke University Press: Durham, 2018. . &Բ;
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South Atlantic Quarterly. 120.2 (2021): 325-342. (with Jina B. Kim)
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College Language Association Journal. 64.1 (2021): 100-120. &Բ;
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Schalk, Sami and Jina B. Kim. “Integrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies” Signs. 46.1 (2020). 31-55.
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“De-politicized Diversity in the American Girl Brand” Research on Diversity in Youth Literature 2.2 (2020).
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“Strategic Alterations and Afro-Asian Connections in Paul Beatty’s Tuff.” Mosaic. 51.1 (2018). 55-70.
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“Experience, Research, and Writing: Octavia E. Butler as an Author of Disability Literature.” Palimpsest. 6.2 (2017): 51-75.
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“Interpreting Disability Metaphor and Race in Octavia E. Butler's ‘The Evening and and the Morning and the Night.” The Bloomsbury Companion to Octavia E. Butler. Ed. Gregory Hampton. 2020
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Lateral. 6.1 (2017)
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“Wounded Warriors of the Future: Disability Hierarchy in Avatar and Source Code” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. 14.4 (2020): 403-419.