Colloquium - Katie Kinkopf

Title: Perseverating on Disability: Introducing crip bioarchaeology as theory and method

Bio: Katherine (Katie) Kinkopf is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Currently, she serves on the board of the Society for Disability Studies, co-manages the Disabled Archaeologists Network, and chairs the AABA Disability Initiative. Her first book, An Introduction to Crip Archaeology, co-authored with Laurie Wilkie, will be published in Spring 2026. 

Talk Description:

Crip Bioarchaeology frames ableism and disability as part of an ideological system that relationally articulates the past and future. This talk brings together key theoretical innovations from critical disability studies, disability justice activism, and biocultural anthropology to present a new way of doing Disability Anthropology. Examples of crip bioarchaeology in action include a wide range of cases, from population-level views of biocultural determinants of health in Medieval Italy, to Paleolithic examples of disability expertise and care webs, to microhistorical narratives of racialized masculinity on the 19th century US American Frontier. The unifying theme is a shift away from “how can we interpret this pathology” towards an expansive view of human persistence, systems of medicalization, and enactments of biopolitical power from inside disability itself. Crip bioarchaeology is an onto-epistemology that meets the high stakes of the 21st century with a critique of eugenics in our discipline(s) and in society, tracing some of the ways biopolitical power has historically been mobilized with an eye towards justice for our future.

Zoom Link: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/86938140592