cassandra hartblay

Author: Cassandra Hartblay

  • A new disability studies research community at UofT

    It’s been a strange year of working remotely, but in spite of everything – Zoom fatigue, postponed projects, an enduring palpable sense of loss in the absence of informal social interactions – something new has been growing and unfolding here at University of Toronto. So, this week, I’m really happy to debut the website of the new Centre for Global Disability Studies, a group that supports faculty, students and researchers doing justice-oriented disability studies with a transnational, anti-racist, anti-colonial approach across the three University of Toronto campuses.

    It’s been an slow and thoughtful process to collectively recognize the goals, vision, and mission of the group, and I’ve learned so much as it has come together through a year-long consultation process last academic year, and a building phase this academic year (read more about this in my letter from the director here).

    The new Centre offers a small grants program to UofT researchers, and will begin presenting public- and campus- facing events later this spring. We also hold biweekly lab core meetings, and offer RA-ships for graduate students. Check us out!

    The logo of the Centre for Global Disability Studies.
    A large blurry circle with two small bright red and pink circles overlapping.

  • The book is here!

    book cover shows book title "I was never alone or oporniki: an ethnographic play on disability in Russia: Cassandra Hartblay" in grey, yellow, and red text inside of a yellow circle reminiscent of a spotlight on an off-white background over a partial view of theatre seats which are painted in a way that some are fading into the background.

    Very delighted to announce that the book is now available!

    Order your copy from University of Toronto Press now. And visit the companion webpage [opens in new tab] where you can find supplemental resources, watch videos of past performances of the play, and consider performing the work yourself!

  • Announcing the Centre for Global Disability Studies – and a job opportunity

    I am very happy to share that the University of Toronto Scarborough has funded a new initiative to create a Research Centre for Global Disability Studies. This new centre, CGDS for short, will serve as a vehicle to bring together faculty, graduate students, postdocs, and others conducting anti-ableist intersectional and interdisciplinary social science and humanities disability studies research from across the UofT campuses and broader community. I am lucky and humbled to be serving my colleagues across UofT as the first director for the new centre.

    Stay tuned for the announcement of the Centre’s small grants for UofT researchers in October 2020, and the launch of a website for the Centre in early 2021. As CGDS grows, we plan to develop a community advisory committee, offer support for researchers, and present campus programming that furthers the goal of fostering scholarship in service of transnational disability justice.

    At present, the Centre is in early stages of formation. We are lucky to have the support of the university administration in this endeavor, including the creation of a Research Centre Coordinator position to support the general operations of CGDS.

    Please join me in celebrating the creation of the new centre, and in sharing the opportunity to apply for this position! While the position is remote, it will likely be necessary for the candidate to be eligible to work in Canada.

    USW CASUAL POSITION 

    PART-TIME CASUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY 

    Research Centre Coordinator 

    Centre for Global Disability Studies (CGDS) 

    University of Toronto Scarborough 

    The Centre for Global Disability Studies has one position available for the period October 19, 2020 to February 26, 2021. This position is governed by the Collective Agreement for the “Casual” Bargaining Unit between the Governing Council of the University of Toronto and the United Steel Workers (USW). 

    Posting Date:           September 24, 2020 

    Salary:               $29.44 per hour + 4% vacation on all hours worked. 

    Hours of Work:       14.5 hours per week 

    To be mutually agreed upon, flexibility in scheduling of hours is required in order to meet operational needs. This position is primarily remote.  

    Education: University degree in an arts and humanities or social science field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.Educational background in critical disability studies, and/or other equity and social justice related academic fields an asset. 

    Experience: Experience with academic research, with the administration of academic units, or with equity and social justice advocacy projects. Proficient with computer programs such as Microsoft 365 (Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel), Zoom, Adobe Acrobat, WordPress, and shared cloud-based filing systems are essential. Experience with software and standards for creating and using accessible texts and media, and knowledge of disability access practices is an asset. Must have financial experience processing expenses and reconciling accounts. Experience with content management for websites and/or social media OR experience learning new software platforms are desirable. The ideal candidate will have lived experience with disability and/or previous experience working in accessibility, but neither is strictly required.The ideal candidate will have lived experience with disability and/or previous experience working in accessibility, but neither is strictly required.  

    Skill: Must have excellent interpersonal, communication, and organizational skills. Must be a self-starter.  

    Other: Knowledge of or experience with University of Toronto policy is an asset.  Must be a strong team-player and committed to quality service. Must be prepared to work remotely; no on-campus work is planned for the remainder of the 2020 calendar year.   

    Please submit a covering letter and resume including references, no later than October 9, 2020 by 5:00 p.m. to Professor Cassandra Hartblay, Director, at cgds.utsc@utoronto.ca, with the phrase Research Centre Coordinator in the email subject line.  

    The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from racialized persons / persons of colour, women, Indigenous / Aboriginal People of North America, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ persons, and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas. 

  • #CripRitual is coming this winter!

    UPDATE: This project has been postponed by one year due to the pandemic, and the exhibition will now take place in Winter 2021.

    This January, I, along with my collaborating co-curators in the Critical Design Lab, Aimi Hamraie and Jarah Moesch, will team up with Tangled Art+Disability and the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough to bring a new art exhibition on the theme of Crip Ritual to life. The show will be a joint exhibition spanning the two Toronto, Ontario galleries simultaneously, while also available remotely as a digital exhibition on the #CripRitual project website. Featuring works by artists from the Canada, the US, and Russia, the project considers the role of ritual in crip strategies that bring disability culture and community into being and support access, self care, and advocacy in an ableist world.

    Stay tuned for opportunities to engage with this exhibition!

  • Talking Disability Art with Eliza Chandler, Lindsey Fisher, and Sean Lee

    Awhile back I got a chance to sit down with Eliza Chandler, Lindsey Fisher, and Sean Lee and record our conversation for an episode of Contra*, the podcast of the Critical Design Lab.

    I’ve been thinking for awhile now about how anti-ableist praxis requires thinking and working to make the spaces of knowledge production more accessible, and in this episode, I ask Eliza, Lindsey, and Sean about some of the unique access practices that they devised for the 2019 conference Cripping the Arts. We hear about the amazing access guides they created, and how they integrate accessibility into their curatorial practices more generally.

    You can find and subscribe to Contra* on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, and Google Play, or you can listen to individual episodes and find show notes and full transcripts on the podcast webpage. You can also follow the Critical Design Lab on Twitter and Instagram for more updates.

  • Book available for pre-order!

    My first book, I Was Never Alone or Oporniki: An Ethnographic Play on Disability in Russia, is now available for pre-order from University of Toronto Press, Amazon.com, and Amazon.ca. The book is scheduled for release in May 2020 [edited to note publisher’s delay] November 2020.

    book cover shows book title "I was never alone or oporniki: an ethnographic play on disability in Russia: Cassandra Hartblay" in grey, yellow, and red text inside of a yellow circle reminiscent of a spotlight on an off-white background over a partial view of theatre seats which are painted in a way that some are fading into the background.

    I Was Never Alone or Oporniki presents an original ethnographic stage play, based on fieldwork conducted in Russia with adults with disabilities. The core of the work is the script of the play itself, which is accompanied by a description of the script development process, from the research in the field to rehearsals for public performances. In a supporting essay, the author argues that both ethnography and theatre can be understood as designs for being together in unusual ways, and that both practices can be deepened by recognizing the vibrant social impact of interdependency animated by vulnerability, as identified by disability theorists and activists. (more…)

  • Disability Studies Lecture Series!

    The University of Toronto Scarborough is emerging as an exciting place to think about disability studies. I’ve been excited to be part of discussions in classrooms and between faculty, and I’m particularly looking forward to a few upcoming events this fall. The dean’s Great Explorations speaker series – a month of public lectures pitched to the broader community – this year highlights exciting disability studies themes, with talks by David Onley, Sean Lee, Anne McGuire, and me. And, the New Frontiers Seminar Series – a set of lectures to speak to faculty across disciplines and bring us together as a community will include a research talk by Dr. Nadine Changfoot of Trent University. These events might just be harbingers of a tipping point to come!

  • Contra* podcast

    Contra* podcast

    Have you subscribed to Contra*?!?

    Contra* is a podcast about disability, design justice, and the lifeworld created by Aimi Hamraie and produced by the contributors to the Critical Design Lab, a multi-institution project.

    It’s been an exciting year watching this project grow in my role as contributor to CDL and the podcast, and with our first season complete and interviews and plans for season two underway, this summer… as podcast feeds thin out… I’m looking back and thinking again with all of the amazing thinkers featured on the first season.

    This is an exciting space to hear Aimi and our other contributors in conversation with podcast guests talking through problems from designing access to creating critical artworks like Mimi Khuc’s “Open in Emergency.” Check out the *full transcripts* from interviews with Sara Hendren, Marcel LaFlamme, Moya Bailey & Vilissa Thomson, Alice Wong, Robert McRuer, and more on the podcast website, or search for the podcast and subscribe via Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or Google Play.

    Contra Logo Master

  • Disability Anthropology at the University of Toronto

    In 2019, a group of graduate students in the department of anthropology at the University of Toronto founded the Disability Anthropology Working Group. Housed in the department’s Ethnography Lab, the group extends and expands on conversations begun in my disability anthropology seminar the previous fall.

    The working group meets weekly, alternating between a public reading group, open to all, and writing group for contributing members.

    This past week, the lab members made their conference debut, presenting research on both parts of a double panel on new disability anthropology at the Society for Disability Studies at Ohio State University. As the faculty advisor for the group, I was very glad to see this new generation of scholars thriving.

    Join the group for our last meeting of the term, Monday, April 22nd, 2-4pm, when we will discuss Erin Manning’s “The Minor Gesture” (2016) through a disability anthropology lens. The group also operates a listserv that circulates information about relevant events in the GTA.

    A poster for the Disability Anthropology Reading Group's meeting to discuss "The Minor Gesture" by Erin Manning. "Each month the Disability Anthorpology Working group, in collaboration, with the Ethnography Lab, hosts a reading discussion of an ethnography related to disability. Coffee and snacks provided. All are welcome! April 22, 2-4pm. The Ethnography Lab, Room 330, 19 Russell St. // In This wide-ranging and probing book, Erin Manning extends her previous inquiries into the politics of movement to the concept of the minor gesture. The inorgesture, alghough it may pass almost unperceived, transforms the field of relations. More than a chance variation, less than a volition, it require srethinking common assumotpins about human agency and political action. To embrace the inor gesture's power to fashion relations, its capactiy to open new modes of experience and manners of expression ,is to challenge the ways in which the neurotypical image of the human devlaues alternative ways of being moved by and moving through the world -- in nparticular what Manning terms 'autistic perception'. RSVP and enquiries: hannah.queinn@mail.utoronto.ca and venessa.maloney@mail.utoronto.ca"

  • Disability, Art & Ethnography in St Petersburg

    An image from an event poster reads "Dis.Art" in English, followed by the phrase "ethnography and the arts" in Russian in black text on a white background. A photo graph of a an old painted carved wooden angel with one wing broken off is on the right hand side, on the same white background.

    Not long ago, I was in Russia, to take part in an event at European University at Saint Petersburg, DIS.ART – disability, ethnography & the arts on October 10, 2018. The event featured four creative works by a cohort of medical ethnographers working on disability at European University in Saint Petersburg.

    The evening started with a screening of some research footage, which Ilya Utekhin and others filmed at Anna Klepikova’s research site, as a way of presenting Klepikova’s new book, Naverno Ia Durak, or, Probably I’m an Idiot. Out this year in Russian with European University Press, the book takes the form of a “novel” or a sort of ethnographic memoir, following Klepikova herself as she works to discover how international volunteers (from Germany, Poland, and other European countries) make meaning in their work at two state institutions for people with mental disabilities in the St Petersburg region.

    With support from Ilya Utekhin, two scenes from my ethnographic play, I WAS NEVER ALONE, or OPORNIKI, were performed in a live reading by Olga Pavlova and Sergei Yakovenko, with musical accompaniment by Leonid Levin.  See the video, above (in Russian). This was the first public reading of the script in Russian, and this ethnographer delighted in observing how the jokes and emotive ups and downs in the script play differently in Russia as opposed to in North America.

    Finally, the evening closed with the screening of a rough cut of a new ethnographic film by Anna Altukhova, about young adults living in assisted living in a rural town in central Russia after aging out of an orphanage for children with intellectual disabilities. The film documents how this cohort imagines what it means to live independently as adults, envisioning standardized ideals of heterosexual family units in separate homes, and pondering what kinds of work might be viable. The film is shot through with an ironic depiction of an unusual practice amongst the group, the standing challenge to spend a night, or several, away from the assisted living apartments that they share in small groups, living ‘independently’ in a seemingly abandoned house (without heat aside from a wood stove). The house, local lore has it, once belonged to a pre-revolutionary Baron, and, was visited by Lenin himself.

    The event and all of the presented works were in Russian. Klepikova’s book has yet to be translated to English. My playscript has also been presented in English, and will be subsequently performed in English and Russian. Althukhova’s ethnographic film will be available with English subtitles shortly.

    The event leaves us with several important questions. Is there something about disability ethnography that calls for visual, performative, or multimedia modalities? Is there something about experiential differences implied by the word “disability” that exceeds the authority of text to describe experience, or that suggests nonverbal avenues of communication? Or, is multimedia ethnography just a fun technological trick for engaging non-academic audiences? What schools of disability anthropology are emerging globally, and how does this new St Petersburg school differ from the Moscow school led by Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova? Is there a characteristic ‘Russian’ approach to disability? Naturally, this event included discussion with the gathered audience, which included documentary filmmakers and disability activists as well as academics affiliated with EUSP, including a variety of disagreements about how this content should be best presented, and whose consumption it might be for. Focused on ethnography and the arts, the event did not include related work on disability justice by young arts professionals in Russia, such as artisan workshops for adults with Autism, fine art studios attached to institutions, public art projects aimed at raising awareness and interrupting ableism, and critical curatorial practices that seek to make art exhibitions more accessible.