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I really enjoyed Carmen Papalia's piece about access in museums. What stuck out about his piece is that his goal does not seem to be to take an existing model of museums and make it accessible to a larger population, but to entirely rethink the concept of museums and what they are for. Rather than taking an institution which is designed for nondisabled and priveleged people and making slight adjustments to it, he instead thinks about museums from an entirely new perspective. I really appreciated this because I feel like that mindset is really important to the field of disability studies - not taking what already exists and making it accessible but starting from a perspective of what would work best for disabled people.

This event is happening at Bryn Mawr this weekend. https://www.facebook.com/events/1164559927056217/

This is my reflection of trigger warnings and cure, prompted by Eli Clare's book Brilliant Imperfection, as relates to my experience as someone with burn injuries.

Deafies in Drag’s videos are a mix of deaf and general humor. The video “Nine Worst Interpreters!” falls more under the general humor category, presenting over the top caricatures of irresponsible, unreliable, and boring interpreters. It reminded me of caricature-based sketch videos by other YouTubers like Lilly Singh. However, there are details in the video that stood out as significant because of some background knowledge I have about ASL and deaf culture (and there’s undoubtedly tons more that went over my head!) The most interesting thing that I noticed was that relatively half of the portrayed caricatures don’t use their facial expressions for signing, which is very telling to how important facial expressions are when effectively communicating in ASL.

All of Aneta's poetry in Deaf Jam for me was particularly striking and demonstrated a maturity beyond her high school age (certainly more mature than me at that age!). She not only was a creator, but a performer. Obviously, ASL is a physical form of communication, but as one of the teacher explains to the professional poet, she expresses emotions like anger and joy through her body as well. Even smaller details, like her facial expressions, conveyed the tone of the piece. 

After thinking about our discussion last week about disability art and aesthetics, I wanted to share 2 pieces of art made by my friend Sabrina Epstein.

I attached a picture of Sabrina standing next to the two pieces of art and I'm also including a more closeup image of one of them.

From Sabrina: "I made these two pieces of art (top 2) about my disability. The top one is titled “An Expensive Petri Dish” & contains a collage of medical bills and bandage wrappers. The piece on canvas is titled “Almost,” about almost feeling comfortable being disabled."

We live in such an audio-centric world. Bound by the assumption of sound as the primary avenue of communication, we rarely get out of our comfort zone to explore the importance and beauty of sign languages. I love the analogy of sign languages as the music notes in Christine Kim’s TEDTalk. The strength of the expression and the pattern of signings convey very different meanings. Even a slight difference can result in very different meanings. However, unlike music which has been widely appreciated and used as a way of expression emotions and feelings, the usage of ASL is somehow bound within the deaf community and is rarely appreciated and used by the outside community.

I have to admit that I found this video way more interesting than I thought it would be. I was feeling unsure about how much I would understand considering I have absolutely no background knowledge about architecture, however, I felt like I immediately understood what point they were trying to get across after just 30 seconds into the introduction of this video. It asks the question: What would the man-made world look like and feel like for those who don't hear? Everyday objects that hearing-abled people wouldn't normally think twice about flashed across the screen: train stop announcements, phones, car horns, ambulances, tea kettles, elevators, heart monitors.

While waiting in line to order a veggie burger at Shouk in Washington, D.C., I was surprised when the two college aged men in front of me ordered their food using sign language. This was one of the few times I’ve observed sign language and I was struck by the energy of the language. Their hand motions signing appeared large and dramatic. I was hungry, but their conversation lingered. Each of them was fully in engaged in the conversation and there was an intimacy that I’ve never observed at a fast food restaurant. When it was my turn to order my veggie burger, the server took my order and sent me to my table with a few polite instructions. At that moment, I could see that ASL is a language which can deeply connect people.