Rate My Professor Shayda Kafai

Shayda Kafai is a Professor in the Ethnic and Women's Studies Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona), where she serves as Faculty Director of the Office of Interdisciplinary Ethnic Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University. Kafai began her career at Cal Poly Pomona as a lecturer and has advanced to her current professorial position. She has held key administrative roles, including GE Area F Coordinator since 2021 and Chair of the Ethnic Studies Implementation committee. Her commitment to mentorship, particularly for disabled and neurodivergent students, led to her induction into the Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame.

Kafai's scholarship focuses on disability justice, mad phenomenology, gender and sexuality studies, crip kinship, menstrual activism, queer fat food futures, and performance art. Her book Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice and Art Activism of Sins Invalid (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) chronicles over a decade of disability justice organizing and art-activism by the San Francisco-based Sins Invalid project, highlighting crip wisdom, collective care, and decolonial strategies for disabled, queer, trans, and people of color communities. She co-edited Mad Scholars: Reclaiming and Reimagining the Neurodiverse Academy (Syracuse University Press), which addresses ableism and sanism in academia through Mad perspectives and care practices. Key publications also include 'The Mad Border Body: A Political In-Betweeness' (Disability Studies Quarterly, 2012), 'The Politics of Mad Femme Disclosure' (Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2021), and 'Reclaiming and Honoring: Sins Invalid's Cultivation of Crip Beauty' (WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 2018). With more than 360 citations on Google Scholar, Kafai's work shapes disability and intersectional studies. She has presented public lectures, such as her TEDxCPP talk 'The Language of Madness,' and served as co-chair of the Social Justice Advisory Committee.