Cynthia Bruce is a blind activist educator and researcher and a Certified Music Therapist (MTA). Before coming to Concordia,she taught undergraduate music therapy and graduate education courses at Acadia University and worked locally, provincially, and nationally on capacity-building for equity, accessibility, and disability rights in higher education and employment. She has collaborated with all levels of government to implement accessibility legislation and ratify international disability rights agendas, and she continues to consult with communities and organizations on accessibility and disability rights. Cynthia has served as both Vice-President and Ethics Chair for the Canadian Association of Music Therapists and as President of The Atlantic Association for Music Therapy.
Her current work aims to bring Critical Disability Studies and disability rights to the centre of intersectional social justice work in Music Therapy. Cynthia’s teaching and research activities amplify the under-represented voices of disabled scholars and practitioners and position the lived experience of disability as a vital source of knowledge that can support explorations of ableist normativity and its capacity to shape relationships between disability and music. Disability Studies has much to offer contemporary efforts to analyze and expose, in the context of equity and social justice initiatives, how normative ideals have restricted entry into therapeutic professions through narrow constructions of competence. Cynthia therefore works to situate disability as valued diversity through examinations of ableism and dis/ableism and their presence in the everyday practices and priorities of music therapy in Canada and abroad.
Education
PhD in Educational Studies, Acadia University
Master of Music Therapy, Southern Methodist University
Bachelor of Music (Harpsichord Performance) McGill University
Music Therapy Advanced Practicum I - MTHY 623-633
Music Therapy Advanced Practicum II - MTHY 624-634
Music Therapy Thesis Research - MTHY 699
Selected Topics in Creative Arts Therapies: Disability, Equity and the Therapy Dilemma - CATS 631/4/A
