The School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin announced that Shanna Killeen will join its faculty as a clinical assistant professor in disabilities studies.
Killeen, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California Santa Barbara, specializes in transnational American literary and cultural studies, with a special focus on disability studies. Killeen is also a trilingual speaker in English, Spanish and American Sign Language.
“Disability Studies invites the kind of interdisciplinary inquiry that brings the humanities and social work into meaningful conversation about how disability is understood, experienced, and addressed in society,” said Allan Cole, dean of UT Social Work. “We are delighted to welcome a rising scholar like Shanna to our School. As both a teacher working alongside our clinical faculty and an advisor to our Disability Studies program, she will help strengthen our ability to deliver on our mission while enriching the intellectual and professional formation of our students.”
Killeen’s scholarship also turns to the contemporary aesthetic and discursive practices of neurodivergent people, and considers the ways they are pathologized as lacking in emotion and empathy. Killeen said their research hopes to trace the evolution of psychiatric rhetoric through the 20th century, particularly through the post-WWII period, to identify a lineage of medical, psychiatric, and popular rhetoric that targets affect and empathy.
“I’m so excited to be working with incredible individuals at The University of Texas at Austin and to develop meaningful work in disability studies alongside my new community,” Killeen said. “Social workers are especially equipped to understand the individual and cultural needs of those with disabilities. Studying the humanities, especially through how we see disability studies in a contemporary light, is critical for good social work practice and I look forward to helping the next generation of social workers prepare for their social work practice. I am excited to be joining a community that will support disability culture at UT Austin.”