UCSB DISABILITY STUDIES INITIATIVE SUMMER SERIES: REIMAGINING (DIS)ABILITY AT AND BEYOND UCSB
A DIGITAL TWELVE WEEK SYMPOSIUM THAT EXAMINES DISABILITY ACROSS THREE THEMES: DISABILITY AND THE ARTS, INTERSECTIONALITY AND DISABILITY, AND DISABILITY ACTIVISM. THROUGH THE SERIES, WE WILL INCREASE DISABILITY SCHOLARSHIP AND ACTIVISM AT AND BEYOND UCSB.
“A Coalition of Marginalized Bodies”
Join us for a digital conversation with poet and writer Cyree Jarelle Johnson on how disability justice can inform the way we define solidarity by focusing not just on identity, but on shared goals and oppressions.
Cyree Jarelle Johnson (He/They) is a poet and writer from Piscataway, NJ. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, Wussy, The Wanderer, Vice, Rewire News, The Root, and Nat. Brut, among other publications. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University with support from the Davis Putter Scholarship Fund.
The event will take place by Zoom on Thursday, July 9th from 3 PM to 4PM PST.
“Self-Reflection and the Art of Capturing the Moment in Our Time”
This session will begin with an introduction to Kelly Gluckman’s work at the intersection between arts and health activism, and then switch gears into workshop mode for the rest of the time. Participants will work on creating their own capsules consisting of meaningful items and an accompanying set of writings. Gluckman will facilitate show-and-tell intertwined with free writes and group share backs designed to inspire and deepen the time capsule creation process. The purpose is to create a package to be opened up in the future that will give a detailed journey through our experiences in quarantine during the time of COVID-19. Participants will decide who they’d like their time capsule to be opened up by and how many years from now. This will serve as a time to have fun and bond as a group, as well as reflect on and capture our emotions, values, rituals, traditions, surroundings, and modes of self-care and fun during this very unique time in history.
Kelly Gluckman is a 33 year old Los Angeles native, multimedia arts activist, sexual health educator, and HIV+ advocate. Her arts practice and advocacy center around finding healing through deep self-reflection, finding humor, and sharing moments of vulnerability with others. She currently serves as the project coordinator for Through Positive Eyes, a collaborative photo-storytelling project and traveling museum exhibition that comes out of the UCLA Art & Global Health Center. Through Positive Eyes plans to open in the Discovery Center at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this summer OR whenever it is safe to do so.
The event will take place by Zoom on Thursday July 16th from 3 PM to 4:30 PM PST.
“Disability and Intersectionality in Journalism”
In this digital event, Sarah Kim will talk about her experiences working as a disabled woman of color journalist, especially during a time when journalism is constantly under attack. Kim will also discuss the best practices when it comes to reporting on disability topics and integrating the disability narrative into current events. She will explain her practice of toeing the line between journalism and activism.
Sarah Kim is an independent freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, NY. She lives with cerebral palsy, which affects her speech and mobility. After completing her B.A. in economics and sociology at Barnard College, she pursued an intensive 10-month M.S. program at Columbia Journalism School. Since graduating in 2018, Kim has written about 200 articles on diversity and inclusion in the realm of disability. She has spent one year reporting for Forbes, and has bylines in Teen Vogue, Glamour, The Daily Beast, Columbia Journalism Review, Healthline/Greatist, The Mighty, Jameela Jamil’s I Weigh platform, Center for Asian American Media, and others. Kim is currently working on a book on spinal cord injuries and sexuality with University of Alabama and Harvard lecturer, Marcalee Alexander, M.D. Lastly, she is the content writer for the Cerebral Palsy Foundation.
The event will take place by Zoom on Thursday, July 30th from 3 PM to 4:30 PM PST.
“I Can’t Even Get to the Back of the Bus: Race and Disability”
This talk will provide an overview of social movements since the late 1960s/early 1970s that brought activists fighting against disability discrimination into necessary dialogue with activists fighting against racial discrimination. These historical examples provide us with important tools for developing critical scholarship about shared histories of oppression as well as shared strategies of resistance.
David Serlin is Associate Professor of Communication and Science Studies, and affiliated faculty in Critical Gender Studies, Urban Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Group in Cognitive Science, at UC San Diego. He is also an affiliated faculty at the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University.
His books include Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2004), which was awarded the inaugural Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize from the Modern Language Association; Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (co-editor; NYU Press, 2002); Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (editor; University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Keywords for Disability Studies (co-editor; NYU Press, 2015); The Routledge History of American Sexuality (co-editor; Routledge, 2020); and Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming). He is an editor-at-large for Cabinet and a founding editor of the online journal Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. From 2000-2018 he was a member of the editorial collective for the Radical History Review.
The event will take place by Zoom on Thursday, August 6th from 3 PM to 4:30 PM PST.
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Stephanie Goldstein
English doctoral student at the University of California Santa Barbara specializing in the Digital Humanities, Disability Studies, and 18th century British literature.
Hangping Xu
Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara specializing in Modern Chinese Literature, Film/Media Studies, Comparative Literature, Literary Theory, and Political Philosophy.
Shanna Killeen
Comparative Literature doctoral student at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Catherine Nesci
Professor of modern French and Francophone literary studies, Comparative and World Literature & Feminist Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.
The Disability Studies Initiative at the University of California Santa Barbara 