New Article on Persons Who Stutter in College

I have finally achieved a professional goal of publishing in some of the most scholarly journals in the academic discipline and study of American higher education. Moreover, this research is very personal as someone who identifies as a Person Who Stutters and negotiated some of these challenges as a student which I also continue to do so today as a professor. Furthermore, these were affective sentiments that I had to bracket in this groundbreaking study of Persons Who Stutter (PWS). This is one few studies which examine their lived experiences in college and contextualizes and nests them within systems of oppression such as ableism. This article is entitled “The Academic Oratory Tax Paid by Undergraduates as Persons Who Stutter” and is co-authored by Dr. Kim Bullington (Old Dominion University) and doctoral student Amelia-Marie Altstadt (University of Illinois Chicago).

In this study which is published in the Review of Higher Education, we used narrative inquiry and a critical framework of stuttering ableism at the community and public policy levels to interrogate how ableism oppresses persons who stutter. We used inclusive and person-first language in this study as well as humanizing research methods which included innovative accessibility accommodations for PWS as research participants. In this study, we name a new concept of the “academic oratory tax” to identify the ways in which PWS in college experienced a participation cost and invisibility. We include implications for practice about belonging for persons who stutter in college.

The article is available online in the Review of Higher Education.