Talks

Upcoming Public Presentations:

AAA / CASCA 2023 in Toronto. Details TBA.

Selected Recent Presentations:

American Ethnological Society 2023 Conference. Princeton University. Paper presentation. Friday, March 24.

Society for Applied Anthropology 2023 Annual Meeting. Cincinnati. Discussant. Panel F-79. Friday, March 31. (And my former student Fatema Ali’s presentation about her engaged ethnographic MSc project!)

“Access as Convenience? Tracing Russophone vocabularies of disability access from the late Soviet period to the 2010s.” Public lecture hosted by the Department of Human Development, CEERES, and the Pozen Centre for Human Rights. University of Chicago. November 9, 2022.

Presenting the #CripRitual Exhibition, Critical Design Lab curatorial team Aimi Hamraie, Jarah Moesch, and Cassandra Hartblay. Thursday, January 20, 2022. Practicing the Social: Entanglements of Art and Social Justice Virtual Conference.

“Digital Selves: Embodiment and Subjectivity in New Media Cultures in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.” Launch event for Digital Icons special issue. The Harriman Institute. Columbia University. November 11, 2021.


Collaborative Scripts: Disability & Chronic Illness Through Ethnographic Theatre & Film. With Cassandra Hartblay and Megan Moodie. An American Anthropological Association Webinar. Thursday, December 10, 1 p.m. Eastern.

“Doing Ethnography Now.” Roundtable. American Anthropological Association Raising Our Voices Virtual Conference. Saturday, November 14th, 5-6pm.

“Syncopated Resonances: Ethnography in/of Fractured Times.” Panel discussion (or experiment!). The Ethnography Workshop, Duke University. Via Zoom. October 1, 9-10am and October 5, 1:30-3:00pm, 2020.

I Was Never Alone: Disability Studies and Performance Ethnography. Public Lecture. Middlebury College. Thursday, October 17, 2019 at 12:15pm.

Bringing Performance Ethnography Back to Anthropology. Roundtable presentation. Society for Humanistic Anthropology Invited Session.  AAA/CASCA. Vancouver.  Friday, November 22, 2019, 4:15-6:00pm, Room 120.

Queer Migrations: Networks, Circuits, and Border Crossings in Theory and Practice. Roundtable presentation. ASEEES. San Francisco. Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 12:30pm.

Disabled People are the Experts: Lessons from Disability Studies. Public Lecture at the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Great Explorations series. October 29, 2019, 10am-12noon.

A publicity poster for the "ethnographic experiments" speaker series at the UofT Ethnography Lab. The text announces presentations by Jerry Flores, Cassandra Hartblay, Sabirn a Scott, and Hannah Quinn & Jeffrey Hacket, fall 2018.White background, black, deep yellow, bright pink, and light green text. An image - a sketch of four female-presenting dancers all wearing deep yellow clothes and pink footwear engaged in movement, and connected by a light green-blue rope that is wrapped around the waists of two center dancers, with the two outer dancers facing outwards, and holding the rope behidn them with arched backs. One of the center dancers holds a paint brush dripping blue paint and smiles slightly.
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.
Publicity image for a recent event “Dis.Art: Ethnography and the Arts” at the European University at Saint Petersburg.

“Ritual Vulnerability: Making Ethnographic Theatre.” Public Seminar Research Talk & “Performance Ethnography: From Field Notes to the Stage” Workshop. UMASS Amherst, Department of Anthropology. May 6, 2019. Details & workshop registration.

“Normal Life: Disability, Design, and the First Post-Soviet Generation in Putin’s Russia.” Colloquium Talk for the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Toronto. February 25, 2019.

I WAS NEVER ALONE: Disability Studies and Performance Ethnography. Colloquium talk for the Program in Theatre & Performance Studies, York University. January 23, 2019.

“PERFORMANCE & REPRESENTATION: disability ethnography on stage.” University of Toronto Ethnography Lab Speaker Series. Wednesday, November 21, 2018.

“Performing ‘Social Rehabilitation’: Disability Services in Contemporary Russia.” Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies. Boston. December 7, 2018.

“Everything Was Infrastructure, Until It Became Superstructure: Towards an Economic Aesthetics of Global (Post)-Socialism.” Roundtable. Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies. Boston. December 8, 2018.

“Designing Crip Feminist Futures.” Roundtable. National Women’s Studies Association. Saturday, November 10, 11:00am – 12:15pm, Room 211 (LCD). Atlanta, GA.

European University, Saint Petersburg, Russia. October 9, 2018. “Happy-End?: Imagining Disability, Imagining the Future with the first post-Soviet generation. Research talk, Department of Anthropology. (in English)

European University, Saint Petersburg, Russia. October 10, 2018. DIS.ART – disability, ethnography & the arts with Ilya Utekhin, Anna Klepikova, and Anna Altukhova. 6pm. (in Russian)

George Washington University Anthropocinema. Thursday, October 4, 2018. 7pm.

Friday, November 10, 2017. 1:45-3:30pm. After Postsocialism?: New Ethnographies Framing the Future.  A panel with Cassandra Hartblay (Co-organizer, Presenter),  Tamar Shirinian (Co-organizer, Presenter), Adam Leeds (Presenter), Larisa Kurtovic (Discussant), and Marijeta Bozovic (Chair). 49th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies in Chicago, IL.

Sunday, November 12, 2017. 12:00-1:45pm. Roundtable. Disability and Bodily Transgressions. 49th Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies in Chicago, IL.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017. Corrupt Matter? Investigating Illegality through the Meanings, Pathways, and Properties of Material Things. A panel with Cassandra Hartblay (presenter), Leksa Lee (presenter/organizer), Smoki Musaraj (presenter), Kedron Thomas (presenter), Nikhil Anand (discussant), and Sarah Muir (discussant). 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Washington DC.

October 4th. 3:30pm. Imagining Normal Russia: Disability & Design from the Soviet Union to Putin’s Reconsolidation. Yale University Slavic Colloquium.

April 14. Presentation at the DISABILTY AS SPECTACLE Conference at UCLA. “I WAS NEVER ALONE: Creating a play about disability experience through participatory performance ethnography methodology.” On a panel with Louise Hickman, Andy Rice, and Anastasia Klupchak.

April 12. Research presentation for the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA. “Global Bodies: The Moral Work of Defining Disability in International Demography.”

Tuesday, Feb 21st at 12-2pm. Research Presentation for the UC San Diego Psychological and Medical Anthropology Seminar. “Disabling Rehabilitation: Performing Disability and Therapeutic Citizenship in Russia” in SSRB 331 (Psychological and Medical Anthropology Lab).

Friday, November 18 at 10:45am. Paper presentation: “Unmoving Violations: Queering the Animacy of Infrastructure to Account for Disability Access.” On a panel titled “The Queer Space of Disability Infrastructure and Design” AQA/SMA, co-organizers Cassandra Hartblay and Michele Friedner. Discussants: Karen Nakamura and Tom Boellstorff. American Anthropological Association 115th Annual Meeting, Minneapolis.

March 4-5, 2016. “This is Not Thick Description: Conceptual Art Installation as Ethnographic Process” Paper presentation for the Symposium on Innovations in Ethnographic Methodology at the UC Berkeley Center for Ethnographic Research, Berkeley, California.

February 5-6, 2016. I WAS NEVER ALONE: An Ethnographic Play of Disability in Russia by Cassandra Hartblay. Staged Reading, talk back, and round table. Swain Hall, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. This work-in-progress reading is supported by UNC-CH Performance Studies, Arts of the Core, and Medical Anthropology. Friday, Feb 5 at 7pm followed by a talk back. Saturday, Feb 6 at 2pm followed by a reception and round table discussion.

November 19, 2015. “Too Much Pushkin, and Not Enough of Us”: Enacting Disability and Therapeutic Citizenship in Russia, a paper presentation on a panel titled ‘Evaluating Disability: Stigma and the Anthropology of Values.’ Thursday at 1:45-3:30pm at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, Colorado.

July 27th, 2015. Does the ADA give the US moral legitimacy as a global disability rights leader?: The view from Russia and Ukraine. A Roundtable Discussion with Cassandra Hartblay, Andrea Mazzarino (Human Rights Watch, Brown University), and Eric Mathews (Disability Rights International).  Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC.

June 2015.  Society for Disability Studies.

“Digital Futures: Mapping New Methodologies for Disability Studies” Roundtable meeting with Kevin Gotkin, Liz Lewis, Emily Ladau, and Beth Haller. Read the Storify here.

Moderator for “Intersections of Disability and Medical Anthropology” panel with Karen Nakamura. Read the Storify here.

Perry, Ellen and Cassandra Hartblay. “Using Simple English in ADA Oral History Accounts: A Self-Advocate and an Ethnographer work together to build an accessible Oral History Web Archive.” Multimedia Poster Presentation. Society for Disability Studies. June 9.

March 12, 2015. “Cripping/Disabling Ethnography.” Studio for Ethnographic Design at the University of California San Diego. Details TBA via the event FB page.

March 14, 2015. “Global Bodies: Problematizing Transnational Definitions of Disability.” Paper to be presented as part of a panel titled “Variation without Difference: How can the Anthropology of Disability Change the Debate?” organized by Matthew Wolf Meyer and Elizabeth Lewis. American Ethnological Society Spring Conference. San Diego, California.

March 1, 2015. “Kakaia Vlast’, Takie i Dorogi: disability and territories of in/access in contemporary Russia.” Soyuz Symposium. University of Washington, Seattle.

November 2014. “Performing invalidnost’: negotiating disability, citizenship and identity between state and non-state organizations in contemporary Petrozavodsk.” Paper as part of a panel organized by Meri Kulmala. ASEEES Annual Convention, San Antonio.

November 2012 at the San Francisco meeting of the American Anthropological Association. A presentation called Undoing Ableism: Toward a non-Dualist Universal Design as part of the Inno-vent session on Anthropology and Design, organized by Dr. Arturo Escobar. Watch the video version of this presentation on Vimeo.

Visit my page on Academia.edu or email me to request an updated curriculum vitae.