Disability Worlds: A reading and discussion

Join us for a brief reading from the new book Disability Worlds (2024, Duke University Press) with authors Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (NYU Anthropology) followed by discussion with Mara Mills (NYU MCC and Director, Center for Disability Studies).

Disability Worlds chronicled and theorizes the authors’ two decades of immersion in New York City’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. They situate their disabled children’s lives among the experiences of advocates, families, experts, activists, and artists in larger struggles for recognition and rights. Disability consciousness, they show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions. Chapters consider dilemmas of genetic testing and neuroscientific research, reimagining kinship and community, the challenges of “special education,” and the perils of transitioning from high school. They also highlight the vitality of neurodiversity activism, disability arts, politics, and public culture. Disability Worlds reflects the authors’ anthropological commitments to recognizing the significance of this fundamental form of human difference. Ginsburg and Rapp’s conversations with diverse New Yorkers reveal the bureaucratic constraints and paradoxes established in response to the disability rights movement, as well as the remarkable creativity of disabled people and their allies who are opening pathways into both disability justice and disability futures.

CART provided. If you have any accessibility needs or questions about our access plans, please contact mk739@nyu.edu.