The executive director for The Black Deaf Project will be the guest speaker at the Disability Studies Lecture Series program, which will take place at 1 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, on Zoom.

Lissa D. Ramirez-Stapleton, who also is an associate professor of education at Cal State Fullerton, will present “Black Deaf Education and Praxis: The Intersections of Culture, Community, and Hope.” The talk is free and open to the public. Register to attend virtually on the Zoom event webpage.

Ramirez-Stapleton’s research focuses on equity and access, identity development, and the educational history of deaf students, faculty and staff, with a particular interest in the intersections of race, gender, and disability. Her scholarship can be found in various journals and public outlets.

Previously, Ramirez-Stapleton worked in student affairs, specifically student housing,  at various institutions and with Semester at Sea. Her desire to support deaf college students of color led Ramirez-Stapleton to pursue her doctorate at Iowa State University. She graduated in 2014 with her Ph.D. in education with an emphasis on higher education and social justice and a minor in women's studies. She won the 2015 Melvene D. Hardee NASPA Dissertation of the Year award, is a 2018 Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, and is a 2019 Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholar through The Institute for Citizens & Scholars.

She is involved with the Association for the Study of Higher Education and the National Black Deaf Advocates. She earned her M.S.E. in college student personnel from the University of Dayton and her B.S. in social work from Wright State University.

The CSUSB Disability Studies Lecture Series started in the spring 2024 semester with five events that highlighted the expansive and interdisciplinary world of Disability Studies. The organizers’ aim “is to increase disability literacy in our communities and to enrich our own scholarship, creativity, and activism by engaging with new ideas in disability theory, history, culture, and the arts,” according to the series webpage.

The series organizers include CSUSB professors Jessica Luck, Tiffany Jones, Jess Nerren, Jonathan Hall and Jeremy Murray. This year, the series is supported by a grant from Accelerate InSoCal and The Cog Neurodiversity Space.

Upcoming events will feature disability studies scholars Brian McGowan (Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) and more. Visit the Disability Lecture Series webpage for links to past events and updates on coming talks.