Mad, Maddened, and Maddening: A Mad Duoethnographic Exploration of Undergraduate Education

Higher education is known to be a hostile environment towards mad(dened) and disabled students, faculty, and staff, who experience high amounts of discrimination, exclusion, and epistemic and institutional violence (Shanouda, 2019). As two activist/scholars with experiences teaching and learning within mad(dening) higher education conditions, we are committed to activism and critique in higher education that cultivates affirming conditions for mad(dened) students through disruptions of the ableist and sanist status quo in higher education. Through a duoethnographic approach (Sawyer & Norris, 2012) that emphasizes the tenets of Pinar’s (1994) currere—which involves an autobiographical exploration of one’s personal experiences within education—this article explores three themes pertaining to undergraduate education: (a) Mad identity, (b) maddened subjectivities, and (c) maddening higher education. We explore these themes through personal and intimate co-writing, with a specific focus on our encounters and learnings with and from mad community, the currently maddened state of neoliberal higher education, and our desire to promote a political maddening of higher education. While distilling these themes, we also advocate for their interconnections and weave our life histories teaching and learning in undergraduate education specifically. Throughout our duoethnographic writing, we strive to critique and disrupt the currently exclusionary conditions of undergraduate education while politicizing madness as an identity and coalitional community. We end by providing recommendations for how higher education can create more affirming learning conditions for undergraduate students while creating space mad community and activism.