Sami Schalk

Dr. Sami Schalk is a full professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at UW–Madison. Her research focuses on disability, race, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. Dr. Schalk’s books, Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (2018) and Black Disability Politics (2022) are both published free open access by Duke University Press with audiobooks also available. Dr. Schalk’s work has also appeared in a variety of journals such as Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, Journal of Popular Culture, Girlhood Studies, and African American Review. She teaches courses on disability studies, intersectionality, and literature such as “Feminist Disability Studies,” “Gender, Disability & Sexuality,” and “Visionary & Speculative Fiction.”

Dr. Schalk frequently writes for mainstream publications, presents public lectures and workshops across the country, and has served as a Senior Research Fellow for New Disabled South and the Black Disability Institute. She is also a working artist and has had her art displayed at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York City and at Art + Literature Laboratory in Madison. Currently, Dr. Schalk is working on a new research project on the creation, maintenance, and impact of pleasure spaces for marginalized people.

Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction

Schalk, S. Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction. Duke University Press, 2018.

In Bodyminds Reimagined Sami Schalk traces how black women’s speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds—the intertwinement of the mental and the physical—in the context of race, gender, and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory with disability studies, Schalk demonstrates that this genre’s political potential lies in the authors’ creation of bodyminds that transcend reality’s limitations.

Black Disability Politics

Schalk, S. Black Disability Politics. Duke University Press, 2022.

In Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism from the 1970s to the present. Schalk shows how Black people have long engaged with disability as a political issue deeply tied to race and racism. She points out that this work has not been recognized as part of the legacy of disability justice and liberation because Black disability politics differ in language and approach from the mainstream white-dominant disability rights movement. Drawing on the archives of the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women’s Health Project alongside interviews with contemporary Black disabled cultural workers, Schalk identifies common qualities of Black disability politics, including the need to ground public health initiatives in the experience and expertise of marginalized disabled people so that they can work in antiracist, feminist, and anti-ableist ways. Prioritizing an understanding of disability within the context of white supremacy, Schalk demonstrates that the work of Black disability politics not only exists but is essential to the future of Black liberation movements.