Blind and Deaf Histories and Their Legacies 9 am-5 pm, Monday April 6 (Virtual)

9-9:10 am: Opening Remarks

9:10-9:30 am: Expanding Access to Art with 3D Printed Tactile Graphics

Michael Cantino

Blind art-lovers face significant challenges in accessing art in traditional mediums, and current approaches for providing access can be inadequate. Traditional, paper-based methods for tactile graphics are often too limiting, while more advanced methods tend to focus on a pseudo-realism that ignores established tactile conventions. 3D printing provides a low-cost alternative to create rich tactile graphics that exceed the barriers of paper-based graphics while maintaining and enhancing the tactile conventions familiar to touch readers.

9:30-9:50 am: Screening the Long Cane (1953): A visual history of Orientation & Mobility

Robert Stock

This presentation focuses on the history of orientation and mobility, an educational program that was systematized in the 1940s in the context of rehabilitation for blind veterans of World War II. Considering the educational film “The Long Cane” (1953) I analyze how knowledge about O&M, blinded veterans, and sighted O&M professionals is visualized. By drawing on Mitchell and Snyder (2006) and Bolt (2014), I investigate the disciplining hierarchies of the cinematic framework.

10-10:20 am:  Miscaptions of frozen hands

YuHao Chen

Annetta Thompson Mills, an American educator-turned-missionary, taught Deaf Chinese children communication techniques between 1888 and 1923. This paper examines the public reception of her work, exploring how cross-cultural barriers and misunderstandings shaped perceptions of disability education under the legacy of western philanthropy. By analyzing miscaptioned handshapes and linguistic performances, the study turns toward peripheral sensations—frostbite, chilblains, trills—that confronted Mills’s students and simultaneously frustrated the staging of deafness.

10:20-11 am: Discussion/ Q&A

Moderator: Jordan Colbert

12-12:10 pm: Opening Remarks

12:10-12:45 pm: Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing

Jina B. Kim is a scholar, writer, and educator of feminist disability studies and queer-of-color critique. She lives and works in Western Massachusetts as an associate professor of English and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College. Broadly, her work aims to connect the intellectual and movement lineages of disability politics and feminist/ queer-of-color critique, extending the work of building solidarity across difference modeled by texts such as This Bridge Called My Back. Her book, Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing, brings a disability lens to bear on women- and queer-of-color writing after major US welfare reform. This book aims to demonstrate the necessity of radical disability politics and aesthetics for navigating contemporary crises of care. Her writing has appeared in Signs, Social Text, American Quarterly, MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States), South Atlantic Quarterly, Disability Studies Quarterly, Lateral, and The Asian American Literary Review. 

In 2021, Jina was supported by a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars (formerly Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation) and a CSREA (Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America) Visiting Faculty Fellowship at Brown University. In 2012, she received the Irving K. Zola Award for Emerging Scholars from the Society of Disability Studies.
 

1-1:45 pm: Roundtable with Jina B. Kim

Round table discussion (45-minute Q&A/Discussion with graduate students and scholars)

Panelists

• Jina B. Kim

• Jiya Pandya

• Nivetha Karthikeyan

• Eden Rea-Hedrick

• Neta Alexander

• Kelly Diaz

• Kenya Loudd (moderator)

3-3:05 pm: Opening Remarks

3:05-3:50 pm: Envisioning Deaf Studies Beyond Neat Borders (Workshop)

Chisom Ofomata, Sophia Williams, Caroline Yuk, Andhrea Tagle Readi, Mélanie Joseph

As Deaf Studies Incubator Fellows at Gallaudet University, we aim to reshape the field of Deaf Studies by confronting historical tensions with Disability Studies. In this collaborative workshop, we will question: What is Deaf Studies becoming, and who decides? What tools and methodologies are needed to challenge current understandings by making emergent, critical work visible? How can Deaf Studies contribute to the broader disability justice movement, and how can we sustain ongoing dialogue?

4-4:45 pm: Comfort is a Trap

Zen Mompremier

4:45-5:00 pm- Q&A/Discussion

Moderator: Jiya Pandya