Disabled Gifted and Black

In Memorium

It is with great sadness that NMDC says goodbye to Chris  Bell.  Chris was to be with us at the First Black Disabled Leadership Summit in May of 2010. For those who did not know him, please take the time to get the know the man. Our grief is eased by knowing Chris' passion and work in the intersections of race and disability will live on forever.  Thank you Chris.

Chris Bell was a Lecturer and Advisor in the Department of English; an affiliate faculty member in Cultural Studies, LGBT Studies, and the Honors College; and the Advisor of the Queer Student Union. He held a BA in English from the University of Central Missouri and an MA in English with an emphasis in rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He was writing his PhD thesis for Nottingham Trent University (UK) on the “spectacle of American AIDS.” Prior to his appointment at Towson in August 2006, Chris lived in Poland where he researched disability access and representation at the museum spaces of Auschwitz and Birkenau. He also taught Cultural Studies classes at the University of Bielsko-Biala and Thesis Writing classes at the Warsaw School of Social Psychology.

Chris had 10 chapters in edited collections, 4 journal articles, 34 book reviews, and 39 encyclopedia entries in print or press. He was the editor of two essay collections, both of which were under review at academic presses. He was recently asked to compile and edit an anthology examining the intersections of blackness and disability. It was to be issued in 2009 from Lit Verlag, a German press that specializes in texts on the African Diaspora. In addition, Chris was a frequent invited speaker and conference presenter, having given over 150 talks at (e.g.) Brown, Columbia, Rice, and Syracuse universities as well as the universities of Alberta (Canada), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Sheffield (UK), Warsaw (Poland), and Zurich (Switzerland).

Chris was the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) Delegate Assembly Representative for the Executive Committee of the Division on Disability Studies and he also serves on the MLA’s Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession. He participated in several media projects including an Emmy-nominated AIDS public service announcement for MTV. The New York Times Magazinehas referred to him as an “expert” in AIDS prevention and education. His honors included two writing awards – the College English Association-Middle Atlantic Group Graduate Student Prize for Excellence (March 2007) and the University of Rhode Island Department of English Graduate Student Conference Best Essay Award (also March 2007) – and a Mellon Fellowship to attend and participate in the 2007 FMS summer institute at Cornell University.

Chris’s teaching and research examined the intersections of identity and social justice. He was particularly interested in how cultural constructions such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and nationality inform and inflect individuals’ sense of themselves as well as their cultural experiences and egalitarian pursuits.