Invasion of Privacy: Dr. Gillian Paku
Dr. Paku’s shares her goal to ‘make students aware of the actual environment they are in and its connections to disability’
Photo courtesy of SUNY Geneseo
Dr. Gillian Paku has been working for SUNY Geneseo for 18 years and affirms that institutionally, it is a model of education that she “feels really good about.” It is the exact kind of job she wanted: a public liberal arts school that provides students with a high-quality education without as much of a financial burden when compared to other institutions.
Aside from her love for her job and her colleagues, she shares that the class discussions she has with her students are what make her want to keep coming back. She believes students at SUNY Geneseo are highly invested in social justice issues and she values the insightful, moving, and “constantly rewarding” conversations that her seminar style teaching allows her to have with students.
Dr. Paku is an Associate Professor of the Department of English and Creative Writing. In the writing department she teaches Writing 105, and in the English department she typically teaches courses in 18th century literature and disability studies in literature. One course she commonly teaches is ENGL 427: Literary Representations of Disability. She shared that one reason she chooses to teach a course focused on disabilities in the literary field is because of her son.
When her son was diagnosed with a number of complex disabilities, she was not only interested in finding out about the diagnostic side of IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities), but also about the literary side of it. She claims this was “a way to think in complex and nuanced ways about something that was happening in my own life.” She also values that SUNY Geneseo’s focus on the DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) framework allowed her to keep disability in the conversation of her field and stay “represented in the mix” of social justice issues.
ENGL 427: Literary Representations of Disability is a course that Dr. Paku designed to focus on disfluent characters and disabled narratives at a higher level of literary technique. She claims that “looking at disability helps us to see something that seems so obvious it did not need to be said.” In this way, her course challenges students to pay attention to the default norms and ways we read and interact with text itself. This includes looking at things like narrative prosthesis, the rigid norms of writing, academic ableism, the preconceived habits we bring to our reading, the changing language around disabilities, and the modes of thinking about disabilities that have adapted over centuries. She also points out that disability literature allows students to see the world from a narrative point of view and a consciousness that differs from what they know. Overall, Dr. Paku believes a main takeaway from reading and writing about disability literature is “respecting the idea that someone else's experience may be different.”
While reading about disabilities allows students to see their complexity in text, Dr. Paku also highlights the way it can provide eye-opening moments revealing the need for advocacy and change in students' own worlds. She states that interacting with disability literature should “make people aware of the actual environment they are in and its connections to disabilities.” Dr. Paku brings it back to the disability community’s motto: “Nothing about us without us.” She emphasizes that students cannot just read about disability and not question how it pertains to the world around them.
In raising awareness on disability education, Dr. Paku recognizes her role in modeling a specific pedagogy along with discussing disability content. She is conscious that many of her students are members of the School of Education, and will be a part of the next generation that needs to have these inclusive conversations in their future classrooms. She states, “I hope I am giving them something that they can use.”
Another essential component of Dr. Paku’s class representing disabilities is the IAL (integrated and applied learning) attribute. This collaboration requirement pushes students in her class to take action and opportunities to be in the same space as students with disabilities. Paku emphasizes that “We need to get out and do things,” meaning that students need to make their own intentional choices to show their support. She also highlights how important it is that students realize the reciprocity of these opportunities. She notes that everyone brings strengths to these inclusive interactions, everyone is seen as an interdependent member of the community and everyone can learn from these experiences. Dr. Paku states that the opportunities to get involved are all around us, people just need to look outside the frame of their busy life to see what is there.
She emphasizes how lucky we are to have a campus like SUNY Geneseo that supports things like the Diversity Summit, Neurodiversity Week (Coming up soon, along with many other cool things on the Geneseo website!!), the LIVES Program, and the ArcGlow Program (Check out this Google Form for information on how to support the current ArcGlow membership drive). Dr. Paku describes these amazing opportunities as ways of “bringing together a sense of disability as a systemic issue and an identity category with real, practical, and lived experiences that are actually all around us.”
Dr. Paku’s passionate focus on disability education continues to be extremely impactful here at SUNY Geneseo. Her dedicated efforts extend beyond her uniquely designed courses and into the direct lives of students as she creates spaces for necessary conversations on this and other social justice issues. These supports continue to keep students aware, engaged, and active in creating an inclusive community. She left The Lamron with the following: “I hope every moment helps raise awareness so we can help make things happen for people in the real world.”
*Become a member of ArcGlow to show your support for our LIVES Program and Geneseo Community!
In becoming an ArcGlow member you will be joining a community that supports positive changes and growth opportunities for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
You can submit your signature to this Google Form. Joining is free and covered by the school!