Community of Practice, December 17th, 2025

The Music and Disability Study Group is proud to welcome Stefan Sunandan Honisch to the Community of Practice on December 17th, 2025 at 10:00am PST/1:00pm EST via Zoom. Dr. Honisch will present on "What Disability Inclusion and Access Can and Cannot Do."

Please register to the session using the following link:
https://utexas.zoom.us/meeting/register/mG7wHwXlRe2UFQoz5gVruw​


Abstract: "What Disability Inclusion and Access Can and Cannot Do"

I’ve been thinking about the tensions between organizational/institutional commitments to diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, on the one hand, and the cost-of-living/ cost-of-employment crises on the other. If possible, I’d like to situate my approach to disability-inclusive language, universal design frameworks, etc., which can be uncomfortably compatible with turning away at the organizational/institutional level from material inequality.
​
Biography:

Stefan Sunandan Honisch is a Sessional Instructor in the Department of Theatre and Film, at the University of British Columbia, having previously held a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow within the department for a project on the musical life of Helen Keller (1880-1968). His research interests are at the intersection of Critical Disability Studies, Music, and Critical Pedagogy. His first monograph project Vulnerable Virtuosities: Disability in Concert and Competition (in progress) uses a Disability Justice framework to explore how blind virtuoso pianists radically challenge stubborn dualisms of musical strength and weakness, demonstrating that vulnerable manifestations of disabled embodiment intensify the aesthetic and expressive power of musical virtuosity.
Honisch has published in such journals as Music Theory Online, Journal of Inclusive Education, Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies, and Journal of Teaching Disability Studies. An article co-authored with Katharina Clausius, Université de Montréal, is forthcoming in Theory & Event. Honisch has also contributed book and recording reviews to Journal of Musicological Research and Nineteenth-Century Music Review, chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies, The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, Transnational Horror Cinema: Bodies of Excess and the Global Grotesque (Palgrave Macmillan), and Defining the Boundaries of Disability: Critical Perspectives (Routledge). In addition to his research and teaching, Honisch remains active as a freelance musician, and serves on the Review Board of Journal of Teaching Disability Studies, the Editorial Board of Public Disability History, and the Council of the American Musicological Society. Strongly committed to service, Honisch serves on UBC Arts Amplifier’s Stakeholder Advisory Committee, and UBC’s Committee to Increase Speaker Diversity. He is also part of the team for the three-year SSHRC Partnership Development Grant “Canadian Accessible Musical Instruments Network.”