We outline critical grief pedagogy as a Mad feminist response to the silencing of loss that often occurs in academic spaces. This pedagogical framework creates openings for students to "break open the bone" of their own and others' losses, particularly through community-engaged learning and research. Using collaborative autoethnography, in this essay we (a professor and her mentees) explore our experiences working with the Scraps of the Heart Project-a community-based research collective focused on empowering families following the loss of a baby-to understand student learning outcomes that were born from our engagement with critical grief pedagogy. Our collective narratives revealed that these learnings included: gaining compassionate communication skills, embracing and unpacking failure as a method of mourning, becoming empowered and empowering others to share their stories of loss, and building a community of Mad grievers. We put these learning outcomes into conversation with cultural discourses surrounding pedagogical and academic norms. Additionally, we offer insight into how loss and mourning can be invited into the classroom so that students learn to engage grief critically, meaningfully, and Madly-and to learn important communicative skills along the way.

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This paper examines the controversy surrounding American college students' use of disability accommodations, a process many find unfair or undue, in two ways: (1) by critically unpacking the processes for obtaining accommodations to highlight intersectional issues of who has—or is barred from—access to such services; and (2) by using a rhetorical lens to analyze how the term "accommodation" influences perceptions of disabled students. By combining these processual and rhetorical approaches, this work uncovers significant issues regarding how university students with disabilities are treated on college campuses. Such research is important because disabled individuals are less than half as likely as their nondisabled peers to earn college degrees. Thus, despite ADA laws and pushes for inclusivity and diversity on college campuses, the American higher education system continues to fail a significant part of the nation's population.

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