A&S Teaching & Learning Community of Practice 2026-27: A Summer of Laughing Ourselves Mad: On Integrating Accessibility While Teaching On Mental Health and Disability

In the summer of 2026, I designed and taught the Cinema Studies Institute course CIN321: Laughing Ourselves Mad - Mental Illness in Contemporary American Comedy. To my knowledge, this course is the first in my department to integrate an introduction to Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and Mad Studies into Cinema Studies, and because the learning outcomes for the course focused so much on understanding principles of accommodation and accessibility, I designed the course’s structure and assessments to integrate these principles as well. I received a resoundingly positive response to the course from students, and my experiments in accessible design appear to have led to improved student engagement and performance overall. I will present on my experimental course design, as well as what parts of it I would recommend other instructors to consider when designing accessible courses.

Presenter:

Tamar Hanstke, PhD Student, Course Instructor, Cinema Studies Institute 

For more upcoming CoP sessions, visit our Quercus site.