{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/129888"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/129888","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Examining disabled students' experiences of learning and labor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","abstract":"Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2025-10-20 without embargo terms","abstract_html":"Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2025-10-20 without embargo terms","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Owens, Lesley Ann"],"institution":"University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Beauchamp, Toby","Gallagher, John","Mortensen, Peter","Russell, Lindsay R."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-07-18","date_published":"2025-07-18","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:06Z","subjects":["Disability","Accessibility","Higher Education","Writing","Graduate School","Labor","Disability Studies","Writing Studies","Critical University Studies"],"languages":["en","eng"],"rights":["Copyright 2025 Lesley Owens"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129888","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Beauchamp, Toby","Gallagher, John","Mortensen, Peter","Russell, Lindsay R."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Owens, Lesley Ann"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2025-07-18","2025-08"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Disability","Accessibility","Higher Education","Writing","Graduate School","Labor","Disability Studies","Writing Studies","Critical University Studies"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2025 Lesley Owens"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129888"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2025-10-20 without embargo terms","The student, Lesley Owens, accepted the attached license on 2025-07-17 at 15:16.","The student, Lesley Owens, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-07-17 at 15:19.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-07-18 at 09:57.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22625 on 2025-10-20 at 16:58:42","Scholars of disability studies have theorized education as a capitalist project that serves to sort workers into the categories of able and disabled, and consequently into different class statuses. However, there is little extant research that uses qualitative methods to trace how this sorting happens on an everyday basis for disabled students in higher education, particularly for disabled graduate students. This dissertation fills this gap by using qualitative methods to document the experiences of disabled students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), examining how writing, the accommodation process, labor, and time contribute to their lived experiences of disability. This project also considers these students’ experiences as workers with economic motives and facing economic pressures. Ultimately, this materialist disability studies project brings together scholarship from disability studies, writing studies, and critical university studies to argue that, within higher education, disability, writing, and the political economy of the university cannot be understood independently—we must examine all three together to understand any individual part. Further, I show how my participants experienced disability primarily through misfitting with the socially necessary labor-time of the university as defined by normative structures like program timelines, academic calendars, and course syllabi. By tracing the accommodation process at UIUC, I argue that the documentation it generates serves to record the university’s purported accessibility while concealing the strategic inaccessibilities that define disabled student/workers’ everyday lives at UIUC. After highlighting the ever-escalating overwork of universities, the unsolvable contradictions of the classroom, and the perpetual labor of reverse accommodation that disabled student/workers must engage in, I argue that challenging ableism will require challenging capitalism itself and organizing based on shared class consciousness, across identity groups and job categories."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Examining disabled students' experiences of learning and labor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Beauchamp, Toby","Gallagher, John","Mortensen, Peter","Russell, Lindsay R."],"dc:creator":["Owens, Lesley Ann"],"dc:date":["2025-07-18","2025-08"],"dc:description":["Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2025-10-20 without embargo terms","The student, Lesley Owens, accepted the attached license on 2025-07-17 at 15:16.","The student, Lesley Owens, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-07-17 at 15:19.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-07-18 at 09:57.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22625 on 2025-10-20 at 16:58:42","Scholars of disability studies have theorized education as a capitalist project that serves to sort workers into the categories of able and disabled, and consequently into different class statuses. However, there is little extant research that uses qualitative methods to trace how this sorting happens on an everyday basis for disabled students in higher education, particularly for disabled graduate students. This dissertation fills this gap by using qualitative methods to document the experiences of disabled students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), examining how writing, the accommodation process, labor, and time contribute to their lived experiences of disability. This project also considers these students’ experiences as workers with economic motives and facing economic pressures. Ultimately, this materialist disability studies project brings together scholarship from disability studies, writing studies, and critical university studies to argue that, within higher education, disability, writing, and the political economy of the university cannot be understood independently—we must examine all three together to understand any individual part. Further, I show how my participants experienced disability primarily through misfitting with the socially necessary labor-time of the university as defined by normative structures like program timelines, academic calendars, and course syllabi. By tracing the accommodation process at UIUC, I argue that the documentation it generates serves to record the university’s purported accessibility while concealing the strategic inaccessibilities that define disabled student/workers’ everyday lives at UIUC. After highlighting the ever-escalating overwork of universities, the unsolvable contradictions of the classroom, and the perpetual labor of reverse accommodation that disabled student/workers must engage in, I argue that challenging ableism will require challenging capitalism itself and organizing based on shared class consciousness, across identity groups and job categories."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129888"],"dc:language":["en","eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2025 Lesley Owens"],"dc:subject":["Disability","Accessibility","Higher Education","Writing","Graduate School","Labor","Disability Studies","Writing Studies","Critical University Studies"],"dc:title":["Examining disabled students' experiences of learning and labor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["English"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:06Z"}