Ashlynn Weisberg
Bio: Ashlynn Weisberg (she/her) is originally from Treaty 6 territory, specifically Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. After obtaining her Bachelor of Arts Honours in women’s and gender studies with a minor in English at the University of Saskatchewan in Spring 2019, Ashlynn decided to continue her studies at the University of Alberta. Ashlynn was the proud recipient the 2020 GSJ AGES Scholarship.
Returning as a student during the Covid-19 pandemic after taking a gap year has presented significant challenges, and I have had to learn, unlearn, relearn, and unlearn a few more times just how to navigate my graduate studies amongst a wide array of obstacles. As a neurodivergent woman amidst a collective crisis I have had to continuously revaluate my entanglement with academia and what it is I do here – where my care comes from. My time here has been a period of becoming – I aim to contribute to the bending and breaking of normative academic practices by finding new and ever-cheeky ways to squeeze poetry, beauty, and small pieces of me into my scholarly writing, challenging the outdated hard structure of toxic masculinist expectations and neoliberal capital, and replacing it with a softness that leads not just to a future, but to the present.
In amalgamating theory across disciplines with poetry, music, and my own affective experience, my work centres an autistic and ADHD point of view on what transformative theory – world-building and dreaming bigger – can, and does, look like.
when we break the rind
and the juice streaks our shirts
let us leave having tasted hope
- Eli Clare
Supervisor: Dr. Joshua St. Pierre
Research Interests: Disability justice, critical philosophy, utopian philosophy, affect theory, collective care and mutual aid, communication, abolitionism, psychoanalysis, the self, the inner child as political agent.
Contact: aweisber@ualberta.ca