In November 2021, the authors and editors of a special issue of the journal Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media gathered online for a panel hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University. A recording of the panel discussion is available on YouTube, and embedded below. The issue, “Digital Selves: … Continue reading Watch the virtual launch event for “Digital Selves”
Ethnography
The book is here!
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!
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. I Was Never Alone or Oporniki presents an original ethnographic … Continue reading Book available for pre-order!
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 … Continue reading Disability Anthropology at the University of Toronto
Disability, Art & Ethnography in St Petersburg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZF1DW4Oyc8 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 … Continue reading Disability, Art & Ethnography in St Petersburg
I WAS NEVER ALONE at Yale
I'm very glad that a performance of my ethnographic play will be presented this March as part of the program of the 2018 Soyuz Symposium for Postsocialist Cultural Studies, this year hosted by the Department of Anthropology and the European Studies Council at Yale. Friday March 2nd at 7:30pm, with a talk back session at … Continue reading I WAS NEVER ALONE at Yale
Ethnography & Design on the AnthroPod PodCast
I am glad to be featured this week on the AnthroPod podcast, produced by the journal Cultural Anthropology. The piece is the first of three in a series on ethnography and design, featuring two other dear colleagues and my collaborators the past two years in the UC Collaboratory for Ethnographic Design, Lilly Irani and Keith … Continue reading Ethnography & Design on the AnthroPod PodCast
ETHNOGRAPHY & DESIGN: MUTUAL PROVOCATIONS
Over the past year, in my role as postdoctoral fellow for the Collaboratory for Ethnographic Design (CoLED), it's been my great privilege to work with an outstanding array of scholars interested in the intersections and conundrums presented by thinking about ethnography and design. A little over a year ago, in September 2016, we launched the … Continue reading ETHNOGRAPHY & DESIGN: MUTUAL PROVOCATIONS
Still Images from the Staged Workshop of I WAS NEVER ALONE
Visual media like video and photography can only capture a limited glimpse of the social phenomena that live performance produces; a photo of a still moment in a performance can hardly produce the kind of communitas or social shift in emotive and interactional awareness that live performance creates.
I WAS NEVER ALONE keeps on moving
I WAS NEVER ALONE (IWNA), a play script based on ethnographic fieldwork in Petrozavodsk, Russia with adults with disabilities, just keeps on moving - developing in new ways and finding collaborators and possibilities that, as a first-time documentary playwright, continue to astound and amaze me. The February 2016 staged reading of IWNA (dir. Joseph Megel) … Continue reading I WAS NEVER ALONE keeps on moving
cassandra hartblay 