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Kathryn Church

Professor Emerita
EducationBA; MA; PhD
OfficeSally Horsfall Eaton Centre for Studies in Community Health, Room SHE-572
Areas of ExpertiseMad Studies; the Mad movement; New social movements; Engaged academics; Institutional ethnography; Arts-informed inquiry and public dissemination; Critical autobiography; Dress and dress practices; Writing; Narrative

I am an Albertan social democrat, a small town girl turned urban loft dweller, and a feminist who likes clothes. I am an academic who resists Grand Theory, a writer whose best stuff goes into email, and a lifelong learner. Currently in my second term as director of Disability Studies, I studied Psychology at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, and Sociology at OISE/ University of Toronto during radical periods in the history of these departments. Neoliberalism notwithstanding, I still believe in the possibilities that academia offers for personal transformation and social justice. A foundational contributor to the field of Mad Studies, I started by studying the “unsettling relations” that psychiatric survivor involvement produces for professional practice. In the 1990s, as an independent researcher, I documented the knowledge that survivor-led organizations produce through community economic development. Amongst my “publications” you will find a dozen plain-text documents written for that community, and an NFB documentary film called Working Like Crazy. As a researcher I connect dilemmas from everyday life with arts-informed knowledge dissemination often through exhibition. My curatorial projects include Fabrications: Stitching Ourselves Together, an inquiry into the domestic construction of wedding dresses in western Canada (1999-2007), and Out from Under (with Frazee and Panitch), an activist disability history created from collective storying of 13 ordinary objects.

Teaching

(Reduced load due to administration)

●      DST 99: Final Independent Study

Previous Courses:

●      DST 88: Research Methods in Disability Studies

●      DST 613: Strategies for Community Building

Collaborator on the following in-progress studies:

  • Cripping masculinities: Disabled men’s intersectional narratives through fashion. SSHRC Insight Grant (B. Barry).
  • Inclusive early childhood service system project. SSHRC partnership development grant (K. Underwood).
  • Bodies in transition: Activist art, technology, and access to life. SSHRC Partnership Grant (C. Rice & E. Chandler).

Out from Under: Disability, History and Things to Remember

●      Abilities Arts Toronto, October 2008

●      Royal Ontario Museum, April - July 2008

●      Cultural Olympiad, Paralympic Games, March 2010

●      Whitby Abilities Centre, May/June, 2013

●      Thames Valley District School Board, London, Ontario, 2014

●      Canadian Human Rights Museum, permanent exhibit, September 2014 forward

Select Chapters:

  • Church, K., & Panitch, M. (in press). Foreword. In C. Kelly & M. Orsini (Eds.), Dispatches from disabled country: Selected writings by Catherine Frazee. Vancouver: UBC Press.
  • Church, K. (2021). Teaching institutional ethnography to undergraduate students. In P. Luken & S. Vaughan (Eds.), Handbook of Institutional Ethnography (pp. 175-189). London: Palgrave/McMillan.
  • Underwood, K., Church, K., & van Rhijn, T. (2020). Responsible for normal: The contradictory work of families. In S. Winton & G. Parekh (Eds.), Critical perspectives on education policy and schools, families, and communities (pp. 89-106). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing (IAP).
  • Church, K., Panitch, M., Frazee, C., & Livingstone, P. (2018). “Out from Under”: A brief history of everything. In N. Hansen, R. Hanes, & D. Driedger, D. (Eds.), Untold Stories: A Canadian Disability History Reader (pp. 8-25). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
  • Landry, D., & Church, K. (2016). Teaching (like) crazy in a mad positive school: Exploring the charms of recursion. In J. Russo, J. & A. Sweeney (Eds.), Searching for a rose garden: Challenging psychiatry, fostering Mad Studies (pp. 172-182). Monmouth, UK: PCCS Books.
  • Frazee, C., Church, K., & Panitch, M. (2016). Enshrined: The hidden history of a circus program. In C. Kelly & M. Orsini (Eds.), Mobilizing metaphor: Art, culture and disability activism in Canada (pp. 25-53). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
  • Church, K. (2016). My dinners with Tara and Nancy: Feminist conversations on teaching for professional practice. In J. Gingras, P. Robinson, J. Waddell,  & L. Cooper (Eds.), Teaching as scholarship (pp. 75-87). Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
  • Church, K. (2015). “It’s complicated”: Blending disability and Mad studies. In H. Spandler, J. Anderson, & B. Sapey (Eds.), Madness, distress and the politics of disablement (pp. 261-271). Bristol, UK: Policy Press.
  • Church, K. (2012). Making madness matter in academic practice. In B. LeFrancois, R. Menzies, & G. Reaume (Eds.), Mad matters: A critical reader in Canadian Mad Studies (pp. 181-190). Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
  • Church, K., & Reville, D. (2012). Mad activism enters its fifth decade. In A. Choudry, J. Hanley, & E. Shragge (Eds.), Organizing: From local to global justice (pp. 189-201). Oakland, CA: PM Press.

Select Journal Articles:

  • Diamond, T., & Church, K. (submitted). What's form got to do with it? A review essay of aging and care work in a time of crisis. Journal of Aging Studies.
  • Underwood, K., Church, K. & Parada, H. (in press). The institution of childhood: A  review of the textual subject. Critical Social Policy.
  • Church, K., Voorstermans, J. & Underwood, K. (2020). Tensions of trans-institutionalization in disabled childhoods: A photo-essay. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies (Special Issue Sites and Shapes of Trans institutionalization), 9(3), 119-142.
  • Reid, J., Landry, D., Voronka, J., Snyder, S., & Church, K. (2019). Mobilizing mad art in the neoliberal university: Resisting regulatory efforts by inscribing art as political practice. Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, 13(3), 255-271.
  • Church, K., Landry, D., Frazee, C., Ignagni, E., Mitchell, C., Panitch, M., Paterson, J. & Poirier, T. (2016). Exhibiting activist disability history in Canada: Out From Under as a case study of social movement learning. Studies in Adult Education, 48(2), 194-209.
  • Lapum, J., Liu, L., Church, K., Hume, S., Harding, B., Wang, S., Nguyen, M., Cohen, G., & Yau, T. (2016). Knowledge translation capacity of arts-informed dissemination: A narrative study. Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 1(1), 258-282.
  • Lapum, J., Liu, L., Hume, S., Wang, S., Nguyen, M., Harding, B., Church, K., Cohen, G., & Yau, T. (2015). Pictorial narrative mapping as a qualitative analytic technique. International Journal of Qualitative Methods,14, 1-15.
  • Lapum, J., Yau, T., Church, K., Ruttonsha, P., & Matthews David, A (2015). Un-earthing emotions through art: Reflective practice using poetry and photographic imagery. Journal of Medical Humanities, 36(2), 171-176.
  • Lapum.J., Yau,T., & Church, K. (2015). Arts-based research: Patient experiences of discharge. British Journal of Cardiac Nursing, 10(2), 80-92.

  • Honorary Professor, Masters of Mad Studies, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
  • Canadian Helen Keller Award (Out from Under), Canadian Foundation for Disabled Persons, 2015
  • David C. Onley Award for Leadership in Accessibility, Government of Ontario, 2015
  • Woman of Distinction Award, Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations, 2014
  • Innovative Teaching Award, 2009
  • J.W. McConnell Curricular Innovation Award, 2008
  • Access Award, City of Toronto (curatorial team), 2008
  • Award for Teaching Excellence, Faculty of Community Services, 2006
  • Mayor’s Recognition Award, – Fine and Performing Arts – City of Red Deer, Alberta, Fabrications Exhibit team, 2000
  • Bronze Award of Excellence in Interpretation (Interior Exhibit) for “Fabrications”, Interpretation Canada, 1998