// events

Upcoming Events

  • Author Meets Readers | Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal
    From Munchausen by Tiktok to wellness apps to online communities to AI, the DISCO Network explores the possibilities that technoskepticism can create. This is a book about possibility and refusal in relation to new technologies. Though refusal is an especially powerful mode—particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no—people of color and disabled people have long navigated the space between saying yes and saying no to the newest technologies. Technoskepticism relates some of these stories to reveal the possibilities skepticism can create.
  • trans + crip + tech symposium
    The trans + crip + tech symposium threads together conversations at the intersections of disability studies, transgender studies, and critical studies in technology. This event convenes scholars and activists to think together about trans-crip digital worldmaking, especially in the wake of hostile legislation transnationally.

Past Events

  • Changing Gender | Making Worlds with Susan Stryker and Laura Horak
    Featuring Susan Stryker’s new book, Changing Gender – a provocative, genre-bending call to reconsider the story we tell about gender itself – and Laura Horak’s new book Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds – an exciting introduction to cinema by the trans creators who are innovating filmmaking to imagine a more inclusive world.
  • “I hope I can find myself in here”: Examining Accessibility at Carleton University’s Audio-Visual Resource Centre with Michael Marlatt
    For the purpose of this workshop, “finding oneself” refers to disability representation within the collection as well as navigating the space itself. The workshop will discuss accessibility alongside many of the common themes found within Michael’s workshops including programming, collections processing, physical/digital archival spaces, training, and equitable hiring practises. The workshop is meant to be collaborative in nature. Michael will also recommend specific action items the AVRC can take to improve institutional accessibility, guided by his lived experience, previous work, and participant collaboration.
  • Crip Mentoring: Creating Accessible Conferences
    This roundtable conversation considers what it means to design accessible conference presentations, as well as how to survive and navigate conferences as a disabled scholar. Panelists:: Michele Friedner, Ruth Osorio, & Kuansong Victor Zhuang
  • Hostile Legislation, Digital Activism, and TransCrip Stories
    This roundtable stories in/access and crip feelings in the wake of anti-trans and anti-critical race theory legislation, as well as the rollback of COVID-19 protections and policies.
  • Community Conversation with Disability Network Washtenaw Monroe Livingston (DNWML) || Disability Design and Activism
    Will Purves, Alex Gossage, and Izzie Bullock from the Disability Network Washtenaw Monroe Livingston (DNWML) joined students and other university community members in a disability studies course to talk about designing with disability in mind and thinking about access capaciously.
  • Donia Human Rights Center Panel | A Discussion on Disability Justice, Human Rights, and the Politics of Space

    This panel is convening as a form of repair across the disciplinary divides, hoping to foster connections among the divergent fields that grapple with questions of disability justice. Panelists : Crystal Lee, Lydia X.Z. Brown, Eman Rimawi-Doster, and Laura Guidry-Grimes

  • [Lydia X.Z. Brown] Algorithmic Ableism at the Intersections: Disability, Race, Gender, and New Technologies
    From algorithmic worker management, credit decisions, threat assessment, health predictions, decision-making technologies, and surveillance apparatuses, algorithmic and automated technologies increasingly have an outsized impact on disabled people, particularly disabled people from multiply-marginalized communities.
  • Access Advocacy: A Crip Mentoring Roundtable
    How do we advocate for access in environments that are hostile to life and living? Where can we find community and fellow accomplices as we undertake this work? Please join us as we think-together about access labor, access intimacy, disability justice, and digital crip/mad life in the time of COVID. Panelists: Sara María Acevedo, Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, Ruth Osorio, and Rua M. Williams.
  • [J. Logan Smilges] Queer Silence: Rhetorical Quieting and an Erotics of Absence
    In their interactive talk, J. Logan Smilges shows how queer and otherwise marginalized populations navigate the risks that subtend their precarious visibility. Centering their analysis on the dating app Grindr, Smilges introduces profile pictures as a digital site for rhetorical quieting—a strategy whereby users regulate how their bodyminds signify to people around them.
  • Writing (or not) on Crip Time: A Crip Mentoring Roundtable
    The Digital Accessible Futures Lab will be convening an informal Zoom roundtable of interdisciplinary scholars and activists in critical disability studies and digital studies to talk with graduate students, early-career faculty, and community members about writing/making (or not) on crip time. Panelists: Nirmala Erevelles, Anna LaQuawn Hinton, Crystal Yin Lie, and Vyshali Manivannan
  • DisabiliTEA / NeurodiversiTEA Party (Zoom)
    The Digital Accessible Futures Lab is hosting a virtual tea party for undergraduate and graduate students interested in disability culture and community. Meet other disabled and neurodivergent students and play some community-building games! Bring your own cup of tea or other beverage/snack/stim toy of your choosing!
  • DisabiliTEA / NeurodiversiTEA Party (f2f)
    Please join the Digital Accessible Futures Lab for a Disabili-TEA & Neurodiversi-TEA Party! Meet disabled and neurodivergent undergraduate/graduate students! Learn about disability culture, resources, classes, and events!
  • Teaching (While) Crip: A Disability Pedagogy Workshop
    According to our universities, we have returned to normalcy — we have supposedly arrived. Normalcy has become a metonym for all of the practices, spaces, pedagogies, and modes of relation that we are expected to desire. “Care” and “flexibility” flicker as vestiges of a supposedly post-covid past, the future of remote learning remains uncertain, and rigor looms centrally in the refiguration of f2f pedagogy. This workshop asks us to consider what it means to crip the classroom. What does it mean to teach crip? What does it mean to learn or teach while crip?
  • [Roundtable] Crip Mentoring, Access Advocacy & the Job Market
    Learn from emerging scholars about navigating interdisciplinary work as a new faculty member, how to think through disability disclosure and pandemic burnout, as well as advice about access advocacy and crip mentoring. Panelists: Sara M. Acevedo, Crystal Yin Lie, Vyshali Manivannan, and Rua M. Williams.