NEWS
New Works
After convening disabled leaders from across the U.S., Disability Culture Lab published a “North Star Vision Memo” of big picture perspectives on problems, solutions, and policies for the “the disability community.”
Visible Voices recently published “The Disability Culture Guide: What to See, Hear, and Read This Autumn” by Lottie Jackson.
Artist Christopher Samuel published “Watch Us Lead: The Hidden Histories of Black Disabled People” in the newest issue of BlackInk.
The NYC Department of Education has released Hidden Voices: Americans with Disabilities in United States History, a 624-page instructional guide on disability in a series about people “hidden from the traditional historical record.”
New episodes are out from Season 2 of the oral history podcast Disability & BDSM by Chronically Kinky aka Noor.
Deaf Materials by Christine Sun Kim is out from Primary Information. The 400-page book “showcases the artist’s vast archive of deaf imagery in mainstream culture.”
The New York Times published an article about Dateability, a disability-centric dating platform, within the context of systemic barriers like marriage penalties.
For ArtReview, Troels Steenholdt Heiredal writes about “How Disability Reshapes Photography” in the exhibition Obscured Portraits: Seen and Unseen at Taipei’s National Center of Photography and Images, Taipei, up until Oct. 26.
In a new documentary streaming on HBO Max, Marlee Matlin traces the life of Shelley Beattie, a Deaf woman and chamption bodybuilder also known as Siren.
CALLS
The PeoplesHub Disaster Survival Fund, in partnership with the Crip Survival Network, is accepting applications from PeoplesHub program participants for funds to cover “expenses related to protecting disabled people before, during, and after climate disasters.” Applications are open until funds run out.
Applications are open for Making Space's Ascend Fellowship Program, a “12-week program built for mid-career Disabled professionals with 5-15 years of professional experience.” Apply by Oct. 12.
Nominations are open for the 2026 Wynn Newhouse Awards for artists “of exceptional merit with a disability.” Nominate by Oct. 15.
EVENTS
Understanding and Transforming the Medical Industrial Complex: Rooting in Collective Care
Thursdays, starting Oct. 8, 7 - 9pm ET, on Zoom
The next iteration of the Health Justice Commons’ political education series will focus on understanding the Medical Industrial Complex’s white supremacist, anti-Black, carceral and ableist roots; its ongoing, oppressive workings; and building our communities’ capacity to create alternatives.
Refusing to be Made Whole: Disability in Black Women’s Writing, A Book Talk with Anna LaQuawn Hinton
Wednesday, Oct. 7, 3 - 5pm CT in-person at the University of Illinois Chicago and on Zoom
In reading canonical and lesser-known works by authors like Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Sapphire, and Sarah E. Wright, Hinton pushes existing conversations in Black feminist disability studies to reckon with the role of Africanist spiritual understandings of wholeness. Hinton tracks how literary works by Black women writers attend to the debilitating and harmful effects of racist-sexist violence while also offering responses to such harm. Grounded in Africanist spiritual practices, these responses ask readers to radically shift away from a disabled/nondisabled binary, positing disability or imperfection as a key element for conceptualizing the human. Hinton develops a new concept, bodymindspirit, as a tool for reading the work of Black women writers who engage disability, a concept acknowledging body, mind, and spirit as inextricable from one another.Crip Aesthetics as Art
Saturday, Oct. 10, 4:30 - 7pm PT, in-person at the San Francisco Disability Cultural Center and on Zoom
Alice Wong, MacArthur Fellow and beloved oracle of our lifetime, envisioned a series of discussions that take disabled brilliance to the messy middle of our current struggles for justice, equity, and access. The DCC, together with the MacArthur Fellows at 45 series and Fellow Josh Miele, is proud to honor Alice’s vision with a four-part discussion series that gets to the heart of the hardest questions in racial justice, aesthetics, artificial intelligence, and neo-eugenics. On October 10th, please join Joshua Miele as he moderates a conversation with multimedia artist and MacArthur Fellow Carolyn Lazard and drag artist Glamputee (Alex Locust). Together, they will explore how access to the arts is an artistic process, not about compliance, but rather an opportunity to take art to new places that find beauty in crip aesthetics.
