Angela Frederick

Angela Frederick is Associate Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at El Paso, whose expertise spans the areas of medical sociology, the sociology of disability, and environmental sociology. Her scholarship has garnered awards from multiple sections of the American Sociological Association.   

Her forthcoming book, Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster, to be published by NYU Press, features findings from dozens of interviews with people with disabilities and parental caregivers who endured the bulk power failure during Winter Storm Uri, which hit Frederick’s home state of Texas in February 2021. Frederick conducted these interviews with the support of a Quick Response Research Award from the Natural Hazards Center. She argues that the vulnerability of people with disabilities during the storm was not an inevitable consequence of individual disabled bodies. Rather, disability vulnerability was “produced” through a policy process that “disabled” vital infrastructure like power, water, and emergency response systems.

Frederick also emphasizes another meaning of the term “disabled power,” that is, the individual and collective resilience of Texans with disabilities. Contrary to dominant tropes that portray disabled people as passive victims or as objects of rescue in disaster contexts, Frederick demonstrates that Texans with a wide range of disabilities employed remarkably creative strategies to survive the storm. 

Frederick earned her PhD in sociology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012. In her scholarly work, she aims to highlight the vital stories, knowledge, and skills that disabled people can share in a time of increasingly frequent and severe disasters.