About

Welcome to Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda’s homepage!

Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda. Dr. Pegoda is bald, wears glasses, and has a black shirt on.
Too often headshots are snapshots of an imagined, enacted, idealistic moment. Here’s a headshot that captures a moment deep in crip time, where the body is in pain, deep in a moment of “your body will betray you.”

Education Snapshot:

  • Ph.D., History
  • M.A., English
  • M.A., History
  • B.A., History
  • A.A., General Studies
  • & 18 graduate hours, Education
  • 6 graduate hours, Bioethics

All content on this website is Copyrighted © by Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda, 2013-2026. All Rights Reserved. Views expressed anywhere on this website or in published articles are Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda’s alone. The full disclaimer is here.

“Like much in our society, history is rewritten to make a systemic issue an individual issue instead.”

–Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda, Bioethics Today—

Dr. Andrew Joseph (AJP) Pegoda is a feminist, queer, crip (neurofibromatosis), neurodivergent interdisciplinary scholar, educator, guest speaker, and author with twenty years of experience exploring human rights through the intersections of history, historical memory, minorities, fiction, and pedagogy. Dr. Pegoda has coined numerous concepts, including “cripnormativity” (2021, updated in 2025), “student time” (2021), “compulsory tolerance” (2024), “stupid suffering” and “stupid (re)infections” (2024), and “parental determinants of health” (2025).

Additionally, Dr. Pegoda is a non-tenure track professor, currently teaching courses on women’s studies, queer studies, crip studies, film studies, and religious studies.

Dr. Pegoda is assisted by the world’s best Support Team: Bella The Chihuahua, Molly Jolly Lovejoy, Dr. Willow Lovejoy, and Dr. Chester Lovejoy and was assisted by the His Majesty Dr. Trevor Lovejoy The Cat from November 5, 2010, to March 2, 2024, when he unexpectedly died.

Reach Dr. Pegoda by email, ajpegoda(at)central(dot)uh(dot)edu.

Select publications

“Eugenic Ideas Permeate The Help: Constructions of Race, Gender, Disability, and Class,” Counter Arts, August 6, 2025

“The Pitt Erases the Pandemic’s Past and Present,” Bioethics Today, July 28, 2005

“Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair: Cripnormativity Rewards Crips like Abbott for Distancing Themselves From Other Disabled People,” Public Seminar, June 10, 2025

“Is Wearing a Face Mask Performative?,” Bioethics Today, March 19, 2025

“Every Suicide is a Social Murder: From the Reel to the Real, Bringing Attention to Nuance,” An Injustice, December 2, 2024

“Society and Historical Memory: Six Common Ways People Relate to the Past,” History News Network, September 4, 2022

See all online publications here.