Listen to this post:

I’m so excited to have the chance to present alongside some of my disability arts and media heroes at the DisArt International Symposium in April. Possibly the coolest part is that you don’t have to be in Grand Rapids to take part. They’re going to offer the symposium presentations and panels through live-streaming to all of you. They’ll have ASL interpretation, Real-time captioning, and a Hearing loop (for those who are there). So yes, accessible live-streaming!

Click here to view a lineup of presenters and read our bios. Everything from visual arts, to design, installations, art history, film, and more, all with a disability studies and disability culture focus. It should be mentioned that most of the presenters, including me, are white and middle class. Not all, but most. The lineup does represent a big range of ages, disabilities, sexual orientations, genders, and overall experiences. I don’t say that to erase the couple of sentences before around ethnicity, just to be real.

I’ll be doing a short presentation April 6, 4:00-4:20 pm about…you guessed it:  Brain injury in film. I’m talking about some representations that I love and some that make me vomitously upset. (Hint:  50 First Dates is in the vomit category just in case you haven’t been to one of my brain injury in film presentations before).

Most importantly, I’m exploring the way non-disabled people keep thinking that they can define the following:  Our narratives, our experiences, which movies about us are good and why, and what’s most important to talk about after TBI.

As usual, anger and frustration fuel my work. But I promise not to yell in this presentation because it is difficult for the live captioners to caption yelling adequately. And also because I’m truly honored to have this chance to present and excited to highlight some alternatives that are out there to how we usually talk about brain injury in film. So yeah, no yelling. This time.

While you’re out there checking out the great work of DisArt, dig in to their transcribed podcast, DIStopia. If you’re interested in disability rights and arts, I recommend subscribing to the podcast. And please do come by in April to livestream the conference on your computer or device. If you need a personal reminder from me to do that, drop me a line. See you there!