When one goes to the theatre or a museum, the experience is typically very one dimensional such that there is limited opportunities to engage with the art. As Papalia writes, “There are more than three ways to engage with a piece of art.” In the theatre, a visitor could meet actors prior to or after the performance or actors could engage the audience during the performance. In the museum, a guide can provide a description of the work. Papalia remarks how the individuals who have guided him through various museums provide him with an enriched experience as each person provided a unique perspective of the art, the museum, and the visitors. How can a museum be more accessible? How can we engage other senses beyond vision and hearing?

CRISPR offers opportunities to help cure many lethal diseases that create suffering in members of the population; however, it also has the potential to wipe out certain forms of human diversity such as disability. As CRISPR gets closer to being marketed as a medical and reproductive technology, we are forced to ask ourselves is our goal to enhance or to edit the human genome, and what should be edited out of existence. Though disability is a positive form of human diversity, it is a widely held belief that it is not. This has been demonstrated with the use of current reproductive technology. For example, parents have used in vitro fertilization to select against disability and disabled individuals have been sterilized during the eugenics movement.

Here is a collage of pictures from the Civil Rights Era.  The pictures speak for themselves, only in part, because they tell a small section of a much larger narrative. They invite commentary and reflection.  We also encourage viewers to write about their memories of the time, talk about the memories that have been passed down to them, and post photographs of friends, relatives, and colleagues (then and/or now) who were involved in this important period of American history. Post links that are of particular importance to you in reflecting on this Era.

I had never seen Deaf Jam before, and I really enjoyed following the journey of this film.  As a student of Deaf Studies/ASL, much of the film's material was familiar to me; the signs, the unique and emphatic expression; the full-bodiness of ASL poetry.  I even recognized several of the artists and Deaf advocates in the video -- Terrylene and Lauren, who show up in my ASL textbooks, and Peter Cook/Kenny Lerner, whose performances I attended last year!  (Goes to show how tight-knit the Deaf World is.)  Most powerful for me was seeing Tahani and Aneta signing and speaking together, including the points in the verse at which Tahani joined in with Aneta's signing ('stop', 'peace', etc.)  I thought the meld of ASL and English slam poetry was heart-stopping to watch;  the dual modalities of l

I very much enjoyed watching Deaf Jam and learning about Deaf culture, particularly because it was a bit different from our academic approach. Often we've listened to the experiences of Critical Disability Theory through the lens of academics and scholars, older activists, lawyers, etc. It was refreshing, relatable, and made me feel really connected to the teenagers in the documentary.

The article, "Designing Deaf Babies and the Question of Disability," by H-Dirksen L. Bauman, discusses a controversial anecdote of genetics and disability, as well as connects the story of the deaf lesbian couple with more theoretical discussions of deafness, disability, and society. I found these connections with broader themes of disability studies we have discussed in class to be an especially interesting theme of the article.

I could only stay for the first half hour of the talk today, but I was so struck by Teresa Blankmeyer Burke's framing of language, particularly her choice to use English rather than ASL, at the talk's beginning. The detail that most captured my attention was the fact that she checked in with the interpreter about pacing, and with the audience about sound, noting this to be a part of Deaf and signing culture as a whole. I am struck by the ways in which this both reflects a utilitarian need to stay in sync in the context of a presentation as well as an overall concern for the well being and understanding of others in the room. 

I'm happily surprised by how much overlap there is between my courses this semester, especially as I am not taking only art history courses. Last week in my Topics in Film Studies course, we discussed Virtual Reality (VR). We used the very accessible platform of Google Cardboard (available here) and the WITHIN app (free for iPhones on the App Store). Ou

ColinArt, La Burthe, and Middleton + Spinney created Notes On Blindness in 2016. The description is as follows: