Disabled Artistic Practices
- Mae Eskenazi
- Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, School of Arts & Sciences
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Curricular Support Grant
Disabled Artistic Practices explores the material conditions of disability in relationship to creative practice alongside peer collaboration and one on one mentorship. The course will combine the methodologies of artistic studio seminars with disability studies, providing a rich historical and contemporary engagement with performance art, sculpture, video-art, and photography. Students will engage in 3 projects over the course of the semester be provided with one-on-one mentorship with visiting QT/BIPOC disabled artists local to Philadelphia and New York.
Disabled Artistic Practices is a secondary level class within a disability studies curriculum that GSWS is building in the next few years. Disabled Artistic Practices will be taught with GSWS in the Spring of 2025, but will also be an elective that students in Fine Arts will be able to take for a credit. What disability studies offers, much like queer studies, is an interdisciplinary approach to understanding deeply rooted systems of oppression. Black queer disabled activist TL Lewis asserts in TL’s work that ableism is the root of all oppression under racialized capitalism. Thus, by expanding our curriculum beyond intro level classes, students will be able to take lessons from disability studies such as transformative justice, healing justice, mutual aid, and a deeper understanding of interlinked systems of oppression and apply it to all of their areas of study. This in turn will also result in Penn being a more accessible campus for all students, not just students working within the Weingarten Center.