Please help us welcome Angela Carter, who recently joined the Mellon-funded initiative Minnesota Transform as Access and Inclusion Pedagogy Specialist. 

IAS: You’re bringing some great new experience to the team. Tell us about your background and what you were up to before starting this position.
 

Angela Carter: Before joining MNT, I worked for two years as an Access Consultant in the Disability Resource Center (DRC) supporting students and instructors through accommodation processes. Prior to working at the DRC, I was a graduate student and instructor in the department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies here at the U, earning my Ph.D. in 2019. In 2015, I worked with two amazing friends/colleagues to start the Critical Disability Studies Collective (CDSC). The CDSC works to deepen the University’s intersectional and interdisciplinary engagement with disability—as an identity, experience, and category of meaning-making. In my own research I utilize critical disability studies, queer/crip theories, and feminist philosophies to examine how contemporary U.S. culture understands and responds to trauma. I am particularly invested in creating more space for alternative, and liberatory, approaches to trauma because I understand this to be imperative to social justice.

IAS: What are you most looking forward to about joining Minnesota Transform and working in this new role?

Angela: I am not exaggerating when I say my position working with Minnesota Transform might just be my dream job! I feel honored to be working on such far-reaching and important initiatives with such brilliant people. Of course, I love researching and writing, but I seriously nerd out about all things pedagogy. I identify as a queer, disabled person and I am the first person from my working-class family to earn a college degree. I know that I would not be where I am today if it had not been for instructors who were truly dedicated to accessible teaching. I also know that my whiteness means that my place on a college campus has never been questioned (even if my disabled ways of being and knowing have been). I’m looking forward to collaborating and being in conversation with as many people as possible about racial justice and disability justice in higher education. 

IAS: What gets you excited outside of work? 

Angela: I’m immunocompromised. So I’ve been really excited over the last few months with any chance I get to eat outside on a patio with people I love (before our MN winter and the delta variant make this no longer possible). 

Learn more about Minnesota Transform
at minnesotatransform.com.