Worldwide lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel, public gatherings, and live performances for much of 2020. Despite this confinement, creativity and artistic production blossomed in many spaces and cultures; as the saying goes, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. Disabled culture is actually a multiplicity of cultures that encompass a broad range of identities and talents. Discover the many ways in which disabled people have showcased their artistry and reflected their cultures during the pandemic. Join us for a live conversation led by Dr. Therí A. Pickens.

Meet the Speakers

Dr. Therí A. Pickens’s research focuses on Arab American and African American literatures and cultures, Disability studies, philosophy, and literary theory. Selected titles include, Black Madness :: Mad Blackness, (Duke University Press in 2019) and New Body Politics: Narrating Arab and Black Identity in the Contemporary United States (Routledge, 2014). Dr. Pickens has also written for Ms. Magazine, The Root, Medium, and more recently, the Washington Post. She is a professor of English at Bates College.

Dr. Akemi Nishida uses research, education, and activism to investigate the ways in which ableism are exercised in relation to racism, cis-heteropatriarchy and other forms of social oppressions. She also uses such methods to work towards cross-community solidarity for the social justice and celebration of community power. She is currently working on a book project to examine the neoliberalization of Medicaid long-term care programs as well as community-based interdependent care collectives and bed activism. She works as an assistant professor in Disability & Human Development and Women’s & Gender Studies Departments at University of Illinois at Chicago.

More in Disability Cultures, Creativity, and Consciousness

Posing Against the Ages: Disability, Queerness, and Race in Fashion
A pre-recorded discussion featuring Dr. Therí Pickens, Dr. Timothy Lyle, and Dr. Tameka N. Ellington

Are you interested in fashion for everyone? Find yourself stymied when thinking about how people with disabilities, queer folks, and people of color engage with fashion? Tune in for a conversation about fashion through the ages for the rest of us.