What does it mean to be proud of one’s stutter? What does one gain from their stutter? Hosts Patrick, Maria, and Josh are joined by Chris Constantino to discuss his radical essay Stuttering Gain and dive into the world of stuttering pride.
In this episode, they talk about the unique experience of stuttering and how we can find benefit in stuttering, as opposed to only thinking about stuttering as a lack of fluency. While the experience of stuttering is difficult, Chris argues that this doesn’t mean there is nothing we have to gain or be proud of.
Speakers
Christopher Constantino, OFS, lives in Tallahassee with his wife, Megan, and three sons, Augustine, Sebastian and Maximilian. He is a speech-language pathologist and assistant professor at Florida State University. He works clinically with people who stutter, supervises graduate student clinicians, teaches classes on stuttering and counseling, and researches ways to improve the experience of stuttering. He is the Professional Development Manager for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Special Interest Group for Counseling (SIG 20). He co-edited the book Stammering Pride & Prejudice with Patrick Campbell and Sam Simpson. Chris enjoys riding his bicycle.
Joshua St Pierre (PhD) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Critical Disability Studies, and Principle Investigator of the Stuttering Commons. Dr. St. Pierre’s research seeks to make interventions on both theoretical and practical fronts. Working at the intersection of dysfluency studies, critical disability studies, and contemporary political theory, his research focuses on the interplay of communication and disability within information societies. His work also seeks to conceptualize and generate resources for radically accessible and hospitable communicative practices. His first monograph is titled Cheap Talk: Disability and the Politics of Communication, published by University of Michigan Press. He is an avid gardener.
Patrick Campbell is a stammerer, doctor and academic living in London, England. Patrick is an advocate for stammering and the rights of people who stammer. He co-edited the critically acclaimed book Stammering Pride and Prejudice and has contributed numerous blogs and articles on stammering. He has an interest in how public and self-stigma intertwine to produce disability for people who stammer and how this debilitating process can be altered through seeing positive value in stammering.
Maria Stuart is Assistant Professor in American Literature at University College Dublin where she teaches nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and Crime Fiction. As a person who stammers, her recent research is in the emerging field of Dysfluency Studies (which has learnt much from the work of scholars and activists within Disability Studies). Her own work focuses on literary/cultural representations of stammering, the poetics of dysfluency, and rewriting cultural narratives of dysfluency. She was PI for Wellcome project: ‘Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: connecting clinical, cultural and creative practice in the area of dysfluent speech’ (2019-2022), and is collaborator/co-director of Stuttering Commons (funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada).