Professor Ernest Gilman, my friend and mentor, died last week. Many called him Ernie, but I always called him Ernesto. He seemed to enjoy it. It was a holdover from his days teaching at NYU Florence, where, I learned at his funeral service, his full title was Ernesto il Magnifico! I never called him that.
Ernesto was one of the…
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*As a 2023-24 Diamonstein-Spielvogal Fellow at the New York Public Library, I was asked to give a public lecture in the Vartan Gregorian Center for Research in the Humanities on March 8, 2024 called: “Image Description and the Critical Blind Gaze.” Below is the recording of the lecture—including questions from the star-studded audience!—followed by a cleaned-up transcript of my lecture…
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I began showing up at Achilles NYC—a running/walking/rolling group that pairs disabled athletes with volunteer guides—last summer after many years away. I was sporadic until I met a young woman named Gillian. On our second run, we flirted with the idea of doing the NYC Marathon. She’s doing Chicago like a month before, and said something along the lines of:…
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I’m honored to be the keynote speaker at DBL on March 13, 2023!
The Deaf. Blind. Limitless. Conference hosted by AIDB will take place in Greenville, SC on these dates: March 13th-16th. This event is for teachers and administrators serving Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Blind, Visually Impaired, or DeafBlind students. CEU’s, ACVREP, and RID credits will be offered to participants accordingly.…
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Year of the tiger: An Activist’s Life (Vintage, 2022) by Alice Wong (editor of Disability Visibility) is funny and angry and silly and deadly sobering and so much more. It’s a collection of essays, interviews, and images on subjects ranging from accessible and inviting coffee experiences to the Chinese Lunar New Year, from media representations of disabled people to the…
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I first read So Lucky (2018) by Nicola Griffith not long after it was published. I remembered loving it and laughing out loud several times. Somehow the darkness and creepiness had slipped my mind. Upon rereading it for this Footnote in honor of Disability Pride Month, I experienced all the feels, as the kids say!
Griffith is a fantastic writer…
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