Advisory Committee

Faculty Working Group for Disability Studies

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Tania Lizarazo

Tania Lizarazo is the Director of the Minor in Critical Disability Studies. She is Associate Professor in Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication and the Global Studies Program at UMBC. She is a neurodivergent and disabled immigrant from Colombia. Her research has used community-engaged methods, mainly collaborative ethnography and digital storytelling, to explore survival, migration, and identity. She is the author of Postconflict Utopias: Everyday Survival in Chocó, Colombia (University of Illinois Press, 2024).
Her class “I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK,” titled after a South Korean rom-com, explores the figure of the cyborg to interrogate how cultural identity and disability are constructed through social media and the role of technology in defining humanness in an increasingly digital ang global world.

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Courtney Hobson

Joining the Dresher Center in 2017, Courtney Hobson works with the director to develop and organize scholarly events and programs for the UMBC community. This includes organizing the Humanities Forum, our public lecture series; CURRENTS, our lunch-time works-in-progress series for faculty and graduate students; social media campaigns; and other related tasks. She also serves on the Advisory Committees for the Public Humanities Program, as well as the Critical Disability Studies Minor.

Outside of UMBC, she works as a  public historian and historical consultant, collaborating with organizations including The Southwest Partnership, Inc., Historical Research Associates, the National Park Service (NPS), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the National Council on Public History (NCPH). Courtney is also a member of the Association of Black Women Historians, ASALH, as well as NCPH, where she currently serves on the Advocacy Committee of the Board.

In her spare time, Courtney is a gardener, amateur archer, cat mom, collector of unread books, and queen of karaoke at her neighborhood bar in Baltimore.

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Sharon N. Tran

Sharon N. Tran is Assistant Professor of English and Affiliate Faculty in Asian Studies and Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research focuses on multiethnic American literatures and cultures with an emphasis on Asian American literature, gender studies, and disability studies. Her work has appeared in MELUS, the Journal of Asian American Studies, Contemporary Literature, Signs, and American Quarterly. Her book manuscript, Asian Girlhood in the Shadows of U.S. Empire is currently in production with University of Minnesota Press and will be forthcoming in spring 2026. She was awarded a 2021-2022 Career Enhancement Fellowship by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars in support of her research and broader commitment to eradicating racial disparities in higher education and fostering more institutional access and support for communities of color. Tran serves on the Gender and Women’s Studies Coordinating Committee as well as the Advisory Boards for the Women’s Center and the Critical Disability Studies Minor. She teaches courses on race and ethnicity in U.S. literature, disability studies, comics, and science and speculative fiction.