Schedule of Events
Upcoming Disability Culture Events Summary
January 17, 4-6 pm EST How to Support Yourself, Your Friends and Others During Emotional Crisis/Hard Times/ Suicidality
Artist and author of The Future Is Disabled, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Student Workshop with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
How To Support Yourself, Your Friends and Others During Emotional Crisis/Hard Times/ Suicidality
January 17, 4-6pm EST (virtual)
In this interactive learning space, come share and learn strategies rooted in peer support/Mad Pride and disability justice community about how to ask for and receive peer support when you or another is dealing with overwhelming emotional hard times and crisis. We will amplify the skills and tools we're already using and troubleshoot around dynamics that are challenging. Participants will leave with a thick resource packet and hopefully some community connections.
Register for the January 17th event.
January 19, 12:30-2 EST DJ Study Group Session 1: Disabled Futures
Are you interested in learning more about Disability Justice (DJ) and connecting with fellow students, faculty, and staff working toward undoing ableism at Dartmouth? We will come together to engage with foundational and emerging voices within the DJ community. Through collective study and discussion, we will develop and deepen our understanding of this intersectional, liberatory framework.
Session 1: Disabled Futures
How can disability justice be a central component of bringing about liberatory futures? Following Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s visit, we will be discussing their new book, The Future Is Disabled alongside other creative multimedia texts.
Sponsored by WGSS
Food and books provided.
Hybrid event online at at Baker 206.
Register for January 19th study group.
January 23, 3:30 pm Back to Back Disabled Theater Workshop and 7:30 pm Film Screening of SHADOW
Still from SHADOW by Back to Back Theater
Based in the Victorian regional centre of Geelong, Back to Back Theatre is widely recognised as an Australian theatre company of national and international significance. The company is driven by an ensemble of actors who are perceived to have intellectual disabilities and is considered one of Australia's most important cultural exporters. They contend their operation as a theatre company is beyond expectation of possibility: an affirmation for human potential.
3:30 pm Workshop
Join Back to Back Theatre's Bruce Gladwin and Simon Laherty in a workshop that provides a snapshot into their devising process.
More information about the workshop here
7:30 pm Film screening
A provocative film and insightful talkback on disability and our collective responsibility. Adapted from the award-winning stage play THE SHADOW WHOSE PREY THE HUNTER BECOMES, this film event is a sly theatrical revelation, weaving a narrative through human rights, sexual politics and the projected dominance of artificial intelligence. A conversation with the artists follows.
The film runs for 56 minutes, and is followed by a conversation with the artists.
Event organized by Hop Center for the Arts
Post-film discussion facilitated by Julia Havard
Get more info and tickets for SHADOW
February 14, 12-1:15 EST DJ Study Group Session 2: Academic Ableism and Crip Pedagogy
Are you interested in learning more about Disability Justice (DJ) and connecting with fellow students, faculty, and staff working toward undoing ableism at Dartmouth? We will come together to engage with foundational and emerging voices within the DJ community. Through collective study and discussion, we will develop and deepen our understanding of this intersectional, liberatory framework.
Join us for a discussion of ableism in academia, "crip pedagogy," and teaching for accessibility and inclusion.
Author Jay Dolmage argues, "For too long, disability has been constructed as the antithesis of higher education, often positioned as a distraction, a drain, a problem to be solved. The ethic of higher education encourages students and teachers alike to accentuate ability, valorize perfection, and stigmatize anything that hints at intellectual, mental, or physical weakness, even as we gesture toward the value of diversity and innovation." In his book Academic Ableism, Dolmage asserts that instead, disability is central to higher education, and that building more inclusive schools allows better education for all.
Participants are invited to explore any or all of the following resources as a basis for this discussion:
Academic Ableism by Jay Dolmage – Access the full text of Academic Ableism via Project Muse or email dcal@dartmouth.edu to request a hard copy.
Contra* podcast episode "Solidarity Chat 3: Jay Dolmage" with host Dr. Aimi Hamraie – Access the audio and transcript of podcast episode "Solidarity Chat 3: Jay Dolmage"
Accessible Syllabus website by Anne-Marie Womack – https://www.accessiblesyllabus.com/
This event is designed to take place in person with a remote option. While we cannot promise an equivalent remote experience due to technical and facilitation limitations, we will do our best to include everyone. Lunch will be provided at the in-person event. While masks are not required, we request that folks wear masks except when eating/drinking. If you are sick, please do not attend in person.
February 15, 1-3 pm EST Rafi Ruffino Darrow: Disability Dance Workshop (virtual)
In this movement vernacular-building workshop, Rafi will lead participants through a series of promptings to reflect upon their relationships with being mis/perceived onstage or in everyday life, toward a revelation of tactics for legibility and staring back. This class will work with the dancers to develop a physical idiom for their movement practice where one may not have always been accessible: especially encouraged to attend are those who have not gotten to experience representations of themselves onstage, and therefore may not have had shown to them the kinds of bodily languages available to them for self expression. This workshop is designed to include a wide range of disabled folks.
Rafi Ruffino Darrow is a dance artist and activist working in Oakland, California. Born and raised in Buffalo, NY their work is rooted in the toxic injury that has shaped their hometown, and the ways in which this troubles the boundaries of the human body and the unsure contours of our global futures. Their work lives in the liminality this precarity creates, and the inter-marginalized care and intimacy it necessitates. They have a BA in American Studies, with a focus on marginalized identities in performance, have studied with integrated dance company Stopgap on a Fulbright scholarship and AXIS Dance. They currently intern with Sins Invalid as an illustrator.
Sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities
Virtual Event
Register for Disability Dance Workshop
2/23 10:30 AM EST Centering Disability and Access in the Classroom with Crip Pedagogy and UDL (Virtual)
We recommend reviewing these resources before the session, however this is not required:
Presenters: Julia Havard and Carly M. Lesoki
This event will take place on Zoom with transcripts enabled.
This session is part of the Accessible Dartmouth Initiative and the Leslie Center Project, Crip Futures: Disability Culture at Dartmouth.
Registration is required. There are 13 seats available.
March 28, 1-5 pm, Arts Access Symposium Viewing Party Dartmouth 104
Join members of the Theater Department and the Leslie Center for the Humanities for a viewing party of the virtual conference Arts Access Summit, hosted by Inclusive Arts Vermont. Drop in between 1:30 to 4:50 to learn more about creating accessible arts spaces. We'll watch presentations and panels, and discuss potential applications on Dartmouth's campus. The free conference can also be attended virtually. Register for the conference here. We will snack on pizza in Dartmouth 104.
The schedule is as follows:
1:30 – 2:30 pm – Accessibility from the Artist’s Perspective Panel Discussion
2:40 – 3:50 pm – Inclusive Teaching Methods (an interactive session modeling art-making practices)
4:00 – 4:50 pm – Considerations for Accessible Programming
RSVP by emailing humanities.events@dartmouth.edu with the event title in the subject line. Please include your name, access needs, and dietary restrictions.
April 6, 4:30 pm EST Caleb Luna: Revenge Body Poetry Reading (Hybrid event)
Join us for an evening of poetry as Caleb Luna reads selections from their collection REVENGE BODY, which examines fat/disabled queer of color life, survivorhood and sexuality.
Caleb Luna is an artist, public scholar and theorist of the body. They are the bestselling author of REVENGE BODY (Nomadic Press, 2022), an award-winning educator and scholar, and co-host of the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back. Publishing, performing and curating across genre and medium, Caleb's cultural work examines race, size, sexuality and disability in media and culture. Caleb holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. They are currently a University of California President's and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. You can follow Caleb on Instagram and Twitter at @dr_chairbreaker, or get in touch with them at caleb-luna.com
Hybrid event/ Zoom participation available
Reading followed by a reception in Dartmouth Hall 104.
RSVP by emailing humanities.events@dartmouth.edu with the event title in the subject line. Please include your name, access needs, and whether you will be attending virtually or in person.
ASL interpretation and captioning provided. Please come scent-free.
Sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
May 3, 5 pm EST, "We See You: Black Trans Living Legends" Preview, Dartmouth Hall 104 (Hybrid event)
We See You: Black Trans Living Legends
A preview showing of the new documentary series produced and directed by LeahAnn "Lafemmebear" Mitchell
The mission: to tell the life stories of living Black and Trans elders, preserving their legacies as THEY would have us know them. To give our community's elders their flowers while they are still alive. We connect with and perform interviews with Black trans and queer elders whose existences, leadership and work have had a significant cultural and sociopolitical impact on today's LGBTQ+ community.
Webinar Registration Link:
https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wzx9OmnlSFq5LYB0_k1eog
Please note: this event is taking place instead of the originally scheduled “Music Production Workshop” with Lafemmebear.
Lafemmebear’s past and present collaborators include composing and sound designer for “Voices” with poet Aja Monet and the V-Day organization/One billion rising, Time's Up and me too International, Peppermint ,Bob the drag queen (RuPaul's Drag Race), Dawn Richard, Suzi Analogue, and Sudan Archives on her latest billboard charter “Selfish Soul”. In 2021, she became the first Black woman ever to produce a record on a Top Ten charting album with "I'm a Survivor (Lafemmebear Remix)" on Reba McEntire's REVIVED, REMIXED, REVISITED. In addition to her music projects, Lafemmebear produces and directs the documentary series We See You: Black Trans Living Legends, which focuses on preserving the legacies of living Black queer and trans elders. Learn more about LeahAnn's work at www.lafemmebear.com.
RSVP by emailing humanities.events@dartmouth.edu with the event title in the subject line. Please include your name, access needs, and whether you will be attending virtually or in person.
ASL interpretation and captioning provided.
Sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities
May 9, 4:30 pm EST Olivia K. Young: Sonic Distortions: Scripting Alternative Black, Queer, Disabled Ways of Being , Dartmouth Hall 104 (Hybrid event)
This talk will play with the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability within the etymological roots of the word “distortion”, taking seriously the directive of 'undoing' scripted into the term. Additionally, I turn to the sensory register of sound to showcase how artists are situating distortion as a transdisciplinary analytic that undoes ocular-centric epistemologies of blackness in the visual field. I turn to the video installation My dreams, my works must wait till after hell (2011) by GIRL (Simone Leigh + Chitra Ganesh) (b. 1967 and 1975) to ask what non-visual representations of blackness surface in the work of artists when refracted through the lens of distortion?
Olivia K. Young is an Assistant Professor of African Diasporic Art in the Department of Art History and the Center of African and African American Studies (CAAAS) at Rice University. They are also an affiliate faculty member of Rice's Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Their manuscript, How the Black Body Bends: Sensorial Distortions in Black Contemporary Art, foregrounds the relationship between concepts of blackness, sensate formations, and the under-theorized keyword ‘distortion’ in the artwork of black contemporary artists. Dr. Young prioritizes collective work in the academy, receiving a Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Grant for the collaborative blog speculative: black art practices of the west and publishing with their collective 'Crip Chronic Femmes' in Disability Studies Quarterly and Performance Matters. In the classroom, they center black cultural histories and contemporary art in order to broaden students’ understanding of the role visuality plays in structuring narratives of race, gender, sexuality, and disability.
PLEASE COME FRAGRANCE FREE. Here is a guide on how to create more accessible spaces around chemical sensitivities.
Hybrid event/ Zoom participation available.
Talk in Dartmouth Hall 104 followed by a reception.
RSVP by emailing humanities.events@dartmouth.edu with the event title in the subject line. Please include your name, access needs, and whether you will be attending virtually or in person.
ASL interpretation and Captioning Provided
Sponsored by the Leslie Center for the Humanities.
May 23, 3 pm EST Crip Pedagogy Roundtable and Disability Disclosure-writing workshop (Hybrid)
At this informal discussion and workshop, participants will hear from the authors of the recent article "Awe of What a Body Can Be: Disability Justice, The Syllabus, and Academic Labor" (Jess Dorrance, Julia Havard, Caleb Luna, and Olivia Young) about their experiences with crip pedagogy across their various interdisciplinary fields. Attendees will be invited to share their own experiences and strategies as well.
Participants will have the opportunity to develop their own disability disclosure statements with the help of facilitator Michelle Warren. These statements can be linked in email signatures or posted in offices and are meant to increase visibility and ultimately reduce access labor.
Event is geared toward disabled faculty and staff, but everyone is welcome.
RSVP by emailing humanities.events@dartmouth.edu with the event title in the subject line. Please include your name and access needs.