This spring, 22 students—both incarcerated learners and those living on the outside—enrolled in a new course offered by Dr. Alia Dietsch at Southeastern Correctional Institute: Disabled Ecologies (ENR 4193). Drawing on Dr. Sunaura Taylor’s book of the same name, the course explored the entanglements of human and more-than-human lives, and how human decisions about care, value, and productivity can actively disable us all.

For example, in the U.S. today, governing institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency often measure water pollution using the concept of “total maximum daily load”—that is, how much of a pollutant a (water) body can sustain before it no longer “functions properly” or remains “useful” for human purposes. Once that threshold is exceeded, costly treatment may be required. This framework implicitly accepts pollution as inevitable, even permissible, until a body’s utility is compromised—at which point it is treated as degraded or expendable.

Disability scholars like Dr. Taylor argue that this kind of thinking invites disablement. Instead, these scholars invite us to ask a different question: What does each body—human and more-than-human—need to thrive? This shift moves us away from narrow ideas of productivity toward a broader understanding of care, capacity, and interdependence.

Throughout the semester, students wrestled deeply with these questions. The work was often grounded in lived experience. As one incarcerated student reflected:

“This class felt personal because of my lived experience of a disabled ecology.”

That connection made the practice of freedom dreaming—imagining more just and inclusive futures for disabled ecologies—especially meaningful. Students focused on real-world contexts, including communities impacted by refineries, coal mining, and chemical weapons production. Freedom dreaming draws on long-standing liberatory traditions in which marginalized communities envision transformative alternatives to existing systems.

Students then translated their visions into policy memos designed to engage decision-makers, including government agencies and public officials, offering concrete steps to help bring these futures into being.

Reflecting on the learning environment, another student shared:

“The collaboration between inside and outside students is really cool. When two different worlds come together, you see new ideas come to life.”

As a final project, the class collaborated on a community toolkit for individuals and groups seeking support or ways to raise awareness about environmental injustices. Developed and deliberated over three weeks, the toolkit served as an “anti-exam”—a collective project that emphasized shared learning over individual assessment, while also creating a resource meant to extend the impact of the course beyond the classroom.

Click here to access the toolkit created by the class.

The final class session offered an opportunity to honor the group’s collective work, including a drawing by an inside student, who shared:

“Growing up in southside Chicago, I never really got into why nature mattered. Because of this class, I’ve been reflecting deeply on Dr. Taylor’s idea of ‘having a sensitivity to life’. This means a lot to me. My mom passed this spring, and now I’m growing my first flowers in the greenhouse and thinking about all the life around us that teach us so much if we know how to pay attention.”

One student’s parting words—‘mad love’—continue to echo beyond the classroom.