In this class, we will survey shifts and changes in the disability arts scene under COVID. How does disability culture resilience respond to shifting social rules? Living in the pandemic meant initially adopting some of the remote-working technologies long advocated for by disabled people. At the same time, social isolation, digital divides, and access issues with digital content meant that others felt even more excluded. 

We will look together how disability arts and culture organizations pivoted to online delivery, and chart (likely in real time) how artists and culture producers open back up to in-person contact, or embrace new mixed delivery models. 

Some historical inquiries will give us a sense of disability culture’s long-time ability to reinvent and reshape art delivery options, and we will analyze tools like critical fabulation for their use in our approach to artful reception.

We will engage online arts and culture content and analyze the affordances and complexities of its audience address, participatory opportunities, and barriers, all the while surveying the contemporary shape of disability arts and culture.

Course Requirements:

1 credit: attendance and Canvas responses to each class’s readings/exercises, wellness exercise.

3 credits: attendance, Canvas responses, wellness exercise, final class project or paper.

Class Format:

This class meets for two hours in class, with additional time in self-study and online engagement with exercises from <I>Studying Disability Arts and Culture.</I> This arrangement of the material hopes to make the class more widely accessible, and allows for a wider diversity of expression and disciplinary foci.