Disabled Desires for Reimagining Archives: Past Experiences toward Future Possibilities

The UCLA Department of Information Studies invites faculty, staff, and students to its Information Studies Colloquia.

Presented, Researched, and Written by Dr. Gracen Brilmyer, McGill University

Through historic records that document disabled people in ways that can reinforce ableist, sanist, or medicalized stereotypes to outright absence from other types of records, disabled people can feel erased in history through archives. Alternatively, community-based archives have been shown to offset historical imbalances through communities representing themselves on their own terms. This talk addresses preliminary findings from a new project by the Disability Archives Lab that focuses on the ways that disabled people imagine archives differently. This project— conducted by, with, and for disabled people—uses community-based methods to identify current issues in archives as well as alternative approaches to archiving. Centering the powerful words of disabled people, this research not only aims to understand the needs and desires of disabled people who have worked with archival materials but also demonstrates the critical role of disabled people in building and designing the scaffolding for a new disability digital community archive.

To attend, email striola@g.ucla.edu for the Zoom link.