Workshop by Gracen Brilmyer, Alice Wong, and Liú Méi-Zhì Bransfield Chen
About this event
How do disabled people tell their/our own stories and re/shape the ways that they/we are documented? And how might capturing and preserving disabled narratives, in turn, shape the ways they/we want to be remembered? Facilitated by Liú Méi z.b. Chen, Alice Wong and Gracen Brilmyer will discuss their practices with disabled storytelling. Alice created a community partnership with StoryCorps, an oral history nonprofit, collecting stories by disabled people since 2014. She is also a podcaster and editor publishing nonfiction by disabled people such as her recent anthology, Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century. Gracen researches the ways the disabled people’s lives are shaped through archival/historical representation.They are an assistant professor and the director of the Disability Archives Lab, which hosts collaborative projects around disability, archives, and memory.
Drawing on their work, Alice and Gracen will highlight how they address narratives of disability in history and the media, access and build stories around current disability experiences, and collaboratively imagine futures where disabled voices are centered. Through discussion of oral histories, interviews, and historical interventions, this event will emphasize the power in disabled people telling their own stories, as they/we address the nuances of disabled experiences and shape how they/we want to be remembered in the future.
Gracen Brilmyer (they/them) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Studies at McGill University and the director of the Disability Archives Lab. Their research lies at the intersection of feminist disability studies and archival studies, where they investigate the ways in which disabled people use, experience, and understand themselves through archives as well as how to tell histories of disability when there is little or no archival evidence. Their writing on disability history, archival methodologies, and the history of science has been featured in publications such as The Journal of Feminist Scholarship and Archival Science.
Alice Wong (she/her) is a disabled activist, writer, media maker, and consultant. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture created in 2014. Alice is the editor of Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century, an anthology of essays by disabled people. She is currently working on her memoir, Year of the Tiger (Vintage Books, 2022). You can find her on Twitter: @SFdirewolf.
Liú (pronounced “lee-oo”; pronouns: they/them) Méi-Zhì Bransfield Chen is a queer, trans non-binary, disabled, mixed-race (Taiwanese/Irish), Abolitionist nerd. Some of their not-so-secret loves include math, musical theater counterpoint duets, women’s basketball, and bodies of water.
Their work combines technology, education, and storytelling, striving to thaw trauma, create connection, and empower community members (and themselves). One of their central thematic explorations is regarding the textures and dimensions of silence and absence. Liú currently works as the Oral History Archive Manager at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago.
Their most recent personal project is a pilot episode of the tidal flats, a documentary-collage on asian queer kinship. They hope to continue producing their documentary-collage as a practice in interrogating and expanding typical understandings of Asian diaspora, identity, and kinship, with particular focuses on West Asian and Afro-Asian perspectives, and the locus of islands. Coming from a History and Black Studies background, Liú has dedicated themselves to probing and uplifting the wide spectrum of historic, contemporary, and future potential relationships between Asian and Black communities.
Liú is spiritually guided by vanguard coalition activists/scholars including Grace Lee Boggs, Audre Lorde, and Ella Jo Baker. They have often been called a trouble-maker.
Image Descriptions:
Left: Gracen Brilmyer, a white non-binary person with a brown bowl cut, wears clear plastic glasses and a tan collared shirt. They slightly smile, looking directly at the camera and are in front of a wall covered in green leafy ivy.
Middle: Photo of Alice Wong, an Asian American woman in a power chair. She is wearing a blue shirt with a geometric pattern with orange, black, white, and yellow lines and cubes. She is wearing a mask over her nose attached to a gray tube and bright red lip color. She is smiling at the camera. Photo credit: Eddie Hernandez Photography
Right: Liú Méi-Zhì Bransfield Chen, a mixed-race Asian person with short, dark brown hair and Clark-Kent-style glasses is taking a selfie in front of the Brooklyn Public Library. They are in their wheelchair, and a black standard poodle is perched on their lap, looking off to the left with a very engaged expression.
These events are open to all. You can use this quick survey to let us know how we could make these events more accessible for you. Note that we are able to provide ASL interpretation for any event, but need two weeks' notice. Please contact Rebecca McGilveray at rlm2203@columbia.edu with specific access requests or questions.