Dr. Mimi Khúc is a leading disability studies scholar whose work is situated at the intersection of care work, art practice, and community making.
Dr. Khúc spent a week in residency at UBC holding public workshops for students, staff, faculty, and community members intentionally devised to help us think through our relationship to one another, the structure of the university, and our intellectual and creative work.
This residency was hosted by the UBC Centre for European Studies with co-sponsorship by UBC Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies, the UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality & Social Justice, the UBC Public Humanities Hub, and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Diversity Grant. Browse the workshops from the residency below.
Our Students Are Dying: Touring the University Abyss
Our students are dying. This is a reality many of us, including students themselves, have not been able to face. We have not been able to look directly at the mental health crisis happening beneath the veneer of our beautiful universities—a crisis the pandemic has only exacerbated. Dr. Mimi Khúc invited us to confront this crisis together, sharing what she has learned from students during her mental health tour across the U.S over the past seven years. Participants had the opportunity to co-create a UBC Archive of Unwellness.
Tarot for the Apocalypse: Engaging Unwellness through Critical Arts Praxis
Kicking off a communal durational exhibit, this event engaged Dr. Mimi Khúc’s Asian American Tarot and offered participants the opportunity to co-create a tarot card as a community.
Our Ableist Syllabi: Toward an Access- and Care-Centered Classroom, or, Reading Our Syllabi for Filth
What if education was not a system of achievement and inculcation into hyperproductivity but a transformative care project? The pandemic has revealed the contours of unwellness in our universities as never before, making it clear that “business as usual” in our classrooms not only cannot serve the needs of our students but also actually contributes to their deepening experiences of unwellness.
Dr. Mimi Khúc makes the case for the necessity of access- and care-centered teaching, offering this pedagogy workshop where participants work together to explore what teaching might look like if care were our first learning objective. Participants were encouraged to bring their actual syllabi to this workshop where the group collectively conducted “access audits” to root out all the ways ableism creeps into our teaching and begin grounding our classrooms in collective care.
Towards an Archive of Unwellness and Care
Dr. Mimi Khúc facilitated a closing event for the durational exhibit created throughout the week. Participants engaged the communal archive that has excavated UBC unwellness to take stock of where we are and where we need to go as we move towards collective care.
How to Survive Grad School With Your Soul (Mostly) Intact
Dr. Mimi Khúc held a discussion on how to do ethical, interventional work within the unethical (and soul-crushing) structures of the academy. Spoiler: she doesn’t know, but we will figure this out together!
