Abby Wilkerson

Disability justice and food justice, disability and sexual agency, feminist philosophy, philosophy of health and medicine, intersectional rhetoric and composition.

Book manuscript, in preparation: The Thin Contract: Social Justice and the Political Rhetoric of “Obesity”

Sustaining and Belonging: Access, Justice, and Able-bodiedness in the Food System: an ongoing collaboration with leading and emerging scholars in interdisciplinary food studies.

PhD, Philosophy, with a graduate certificate in Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1995

M.A., Philosophy, Texas Tech University, 1987

M.A., English, Texas Tech University, 1985

B.A., Philosophy and English, Texas Tech University, 1982

UW 1020 Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability, Intersectionality, and Social Justice

UW 1020 The Good Food Revolution: Food Movements and Rhetorics of Social Change

UW 1020 Recipes, Politics, and Power

UW 1020 Critical Conditions: Reading, Writing, Resisting Ascriptions of Illness

UW 1020 Writing Gendered Bodies

WGSS 2125 Varieties of Feminist Theories

WGSS Gendered Bodies (undergraduate seminar)

WGSS 6270 Sexualities

Book

Diagnosis: Difference: The Moral Authority of Medicine.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998.  185 pp.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“They Tried to Make Me Go to Rehab But I Said No, No, No: Single-Serve Packs and the Social Contract.” Conversations with Food, ed. D. Chansky and S. W. Tracy. Vernon Press, 2020.

“Shame and Trauma Go to Class: Transformative Practices of Disability Justice.” Public Philosophy Journal, Fall 2019. DOI: 10.25335/PPJ.2.2-08.

“‘Her Body Her Own Worst Enemy’: The Medicalization of Violence Against Women.” Analyzing Violence Against Women. Wanda Teays, ed. Springer, 2019. 131-147.

“Not Your Father’s Family Farm: Toward Transformative Rhetorics of Food and Agriculture.” Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics. Melissa A. Goldthwaite, ed. Southern Illinois UP, 2017. 119-131.

“Composing Disability: Crip Ecologies.” Introduction to Special Symposium for Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 13.4 (2017): 473-476 (with co-authors Joseph Fisher and Wade Fletcher).

“Disability and Depression.” Interview with Ann Cvetkovich. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 13.4 (2016): 497-503. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11673-016-9751-z.

“Judging, Tasting, Knowing ‘Good’ Food.” Introduction to special article cluster for Food, Culture and Society 19.2 (2016): 223-26. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15528014.2016.1178524.

“Should I Tell My Students I Have Depression?” Disability, The New York Times 14 December (2016). https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/opinion/should-i-tell-my-students-i-have-depression.html. Selected for inclusion in the anthology Nothing About Us Without Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, ed. Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Peter Catapano, Norton, 2019.

“Critical Analysis of Student Ethnography.” Twenty Writing Assignments in Context: An Instructor’s Resource for the Composition Classroom, ed. Melissa Bender and Karma Waltonen. McFarland Books, 2016, 257-270.

“Wandering in the Unhomelike: Chronic Depression, Inequality, and the Recovery Imperative.” Feminist Phenomenology and Medicine, ed. Kristin Zeiler and Lisa Kall. Albany: SUNY Press, 2014, 285-303.

“I Want to Hold Your Hand: Abstinence Curricula, Bioethics, and the Silencing of Desire.” Journal of Medical Humanities 34.2 (2013): 101-108.

“A Place at the Table.” TPM: The Philosophers’ Magazine 61 (2^nd Quarter, 2013): 100-106.

“Food and Disability Studies: Vulnerable Bodies, Eating or ‘Not Eating.’” Food, Culture & Society 14.1 (2011):17-28 (invited contribution to the journal’s Focus feature addressing current debates and new directions for food studies).

“Refusing Diagnosis: Mother-Daughter Agency in Confronting Psychiatric Rhetoric.” Disability and Mothering.  Ed. Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio.  Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2011, 98-112.

“Normate Sex and Its Discontents.” Disability and Sexuality. Ed. Anna Mollow and Robert McRuer. Durham: Duke UP, 2011, 183-207. 

“Disability, Sex Radicalism, and the Problem of Political Agency.”  [Reprint.] 

“’Obesity,’ the Transnational Plate, and the Thin Contract.”  Radical Philosophy Review 13.1 (2010): 43-67.

“From the Land of the Fat to the Fat of the Land: The Thin Contract, Food Cultures, and Social Justice.”  Whose Weight Is It Anyway? Essays on Ethics and Eating, ed. Sofie Vandamme, Suzanne van de Vathorst, and Inez de Beaufort.  Leuven, Belgium: Acco Academic, 2010, 143-157.

“Slipping.” Gay Shame. Ed. David Halperin and Valerie Traub. University of Chicago Press, 2009, 188-191.

“Medical Agency, Political Agency: Transgender Perspectives.” American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Feminism 6.2 (Spring 2007) 17-20.

“Bias and Body Size: The Social Contract and the Fat Liberation Movement.” The Atkins Diet and Philosophy.  Ed. Lisa Heldke, Kerri Mommer, and Cindy Pineo. Chicago: Open Court, 2005, 136-151.

“Introduction.” GLQ: A Lesbian and Gay Studies Journal. Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies (Special Issue), with co-author Robert McRuer.  9.1-2 (Dec. 2002): 1-23. Selected Best Special Issue of a Journal by Council of Editors of Learned Journals, 2003. 

“Disability, Sex Radicalism, and the Problem of Political Agency.” NWSA Journal 14.3 (Fall 2002) 33-57. Reprinted in Love and Sex: A Primer, ed. Stacy Keltner, 2020; Feminist Disability Studies, ed. Kim Q. Hall, 2011; and Sex, Self, and Society: The Social Context of Sexuality, ed. Tracey Steele, 2005.

“Locating Risk, Fostering Empathy: Campus Rape, the Classroom, and Rhetorics of Safety.” Transformations 10.2 (Fall 1999): 60-68.

"Homophobia and the Moral Authority of Medicine." Journal of Homosexuality 27.3‑4 (1994): 329‑347. Published concurrently as Gay Ethics, ed. Timothy F. Murphy, 1994. Excerpt reprinted in Health Care and the Law: A Multidisciplinary Reader, ed. John H. Robinson, Roberta M. Berry, and Kevin McDonnell, 1999.  

"Ending at the Skin: Sexuality and Race in Feminist Theorizing." Hypatia 12.3 (Summer 1997): 164-173.

Journal Issue Guest Editing

“Composing Disability: Crip Ecologies.” Special Symposium for Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 13.4 (2016) (with co-editors Joseph Fisher and Wade Fletcher).                                                                                     

“Judging, Tasting, Knowing ‘Good’ Food.” Special article cluster for Food, Culture and Society 19.2 (2016).

Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies (Special Issue), with co-editor Robert McRuer. GLQ: A Lesbian and Gay Studies Journal 9.1-2 (Dec. 2002). Selected Best Special Issue of a Journal by Council of Editors of Learned Journals, 2003.