This article uses disability theory frameworks to analyze an infamous phenomenon in addiction life writing: Beat generation semi-autobiographical novels. I analyze William Burroughs, connecting his aesthetics to his intentional substance abuse and understanding of his addiction and status as drug user as a site of identity formation, marginalization, and sociopolitical organization. Through forms like the cut-up technique, and through content involving bodily and mental distortion and fragmentation, Burroughs uses drugs to invoke a modern, disabled aesthetic. Through writing of his own experience to resist state systems of oppression and situate themselves alongside other marginalized groups, I argue that the formal elements of genre constrain the ability to represent the incurable and multifaceted realities of addiction, but these Beat novels have generative elements that can help us conceptualize a more inclusive future of drug and addiction storytelling.
This paper introduces Crip storywork, a framework nurturing the relationship between disability and pedagogy, articulating the connections between teaching disabled people’s and community’s stories, and storywork as a pedagogical process of doing so that highlights the linkages and relations between disability and everyday life. Through crip storytelling, it centers disabled knowledge as a form of engagement with a crip spatial imaginary that resists dominant narratives of the future where disability and disabled people seldom exist. I invite readers to engage with disabled futures, crystallize crip imaginings, and reimagine crip storytelling as both research and worldbuilding grounded in the politics of bodily knowledge. In this piece, I detail the ways Crip storywork taps into political movement work, bodily knowledge, history, cosmology, and the environment—addressing a process that allows disabled folks to reclaim space, both figuratively and literally, across time rather than being passively erased. As both method and pedagogy, Crip storywork challenges white, ableist knowledge construction and storytelling traditions by honoring narrative, embodied, and ancestral ways of knowing. It resists extractive approaches to methodology and instead uplifts the wisdom of disabled stories—holding space for disabled realities, griefs, joys, and liberatory visions. Crip storywork demands that we not only witness disabled lives but co-create stories that reclaim lost histories and imagine accessible, liberated futures through our embodied stories. In doing so, it offers a radical refusal of normative methodological and pedagogical boundaries through a bold embrace of disabled futures and worldbuilding.
The question of “fairness” is prominent in the discourse surrounding whether athletes who utilize prosthetic limbs such as running blades should be allowed to compete against athletes with only organic limbs. While the idealized “whole” body is generally perceived as inherently superior to a disabled body, the view of advanced technology as quasi-miraculous contributes to “cyborg anxiety,” wherein the presumed superiority of nondisabled bodies is directly challenged, sparking feelings of discomfort, distrust, and defensiveness. Applying concepts from disability studies with science and technology studies (STS) and cultural analysis, alongside analysis of various technologies’ real and perceived affordances, this paper argues that fairness is the wrong framework through which to explore this issue. Rather, this analysis reveals that the concept of fairness in sport is socially constructed and subjectively reinforced as a way of reifying essentialist notions of categories such as race, gender, and (dis)ability. Thus, the notion of a “level playing field” is weaponized to maintain a false binary between disabled and nondisabled bodies.
Although recent decades have observed rapid developments in technology, communication, and educational practice, contemporary culture remains deeply shaped by the so-called ocularcentric paradigm: the assumption that sight is the principal sense and that knowledge is fundamentally derived from visual inspection. This approach is particularly pronounced in mathematics, a discipline commonly associated with demonstrable certainty, while also being frequently regarded as dependent upon graphical representation of abstract ideas. As a result, mathematical activity is often non-accessible to individuals with low or no sight. This paper seeks to challenge this pervasive misconception. It first traces the historical emergence of ocularcentrism, with particular attention to its entrenchment in Western intellectual traditions. It then examines a selection of notable contributions by blind scientists over the past three centuries, highlighting the generative, structural influence that blindness exerted on their cognitive approaches, research practices, and innovative achievements. By foregrounding these often-overlooked epistemic dynamics, the paper argues for a reconsideration of blindness not as a deficit, but as a potentially productive mode of engaging with mathematical thought.
Scholars are increasingly partnering with local communities and turning to participatory and codesign approaches to the study of disability. In this article, I document the 2024 Invisible Aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity arts exhibition’s organizational process, featured art and lessons learned. Though I served as the primary organizer, I spent four months working closely with contributors from the Cornell University community to “co-curate” the exhibition, a process I define by its collaborative nature as I regularly sought and implemented input that shaped numerous exhibition elements (e.g., exhibition title, art descriptions, visitor engagement activities) in response to a broader theme of invisible and often misunderstood aspects of disability and neurodiversity. The exhibition featured visual, tactile, and sonic art from nine students and staff across campus, including myself. From fiber to plaster and pill bottles to rocks, each piece was constructed to communicate its creator’s unique experiences of invisibility. This article is organized by its contributions to our understanding of (co-)curatorial practices, disability representation, and invisible experiences of disability and neurodiversity. Highlighting the full process, from art development and planning workshops through dialogue between art contributions and visitor responses to the opening event, I conclude with key takeaways and open questions for readers who may engage with disability arts as curators, artists, and visitors, at present and in future. I hope they inspire others to implement disability arts events within their communities.
