DISCO Network Presents - How to Survive Techno-Hellscapes: On Crip Wisdom and Critique
Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Christa Teston, and The Cyborg Jillian Weise in conversation with M. Remi Yergeau
Everything is on fire. The supports disabled people need for survival are being decimated. The robots are coming after us, harvesting our data, surveilling us, and determining who is worthy to live. What can we do? How might the wisdom of disability elders and cross-movement organizers equip us for what’s happening and what’s to come? This roundtable brings together disability culture workers, activists, writers, and scholars to think-together about disability futures.
All are welcome and we strongly encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend. Refreshments are provided for the first 100 attendees!
Advance registration is recommended.
Register to attend in person: https://myumi.ch/A148w
Register to attend on Zoom: https://myumi.ch/G2qgm
Meet the Panelists
Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (she/they) is a nonbinary femme autistic disabled writer, space creator and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician/Roma ascent. They are the author or co-editor of ten books, including The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon) Beyond Survival; Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, Tonguebreaker, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, and Bodymap. A Lambda Award winner who has been shortlisted for the Publishing Triangle five times, she is winner of Lambda’s 2020 Jeanne Córdova Award “honoring a lifetime of work documenting the complexities of queer of color/femme/disabled experience” and a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow. Since 2009, they have been a lead performer with disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid. Raised in rust belt central Massachusetts and shaped by T’karonto and Oakland, they are currently at work building Living Altars/The Stacey Park Milbern Liberation Arts Center, a home for disabled QTBIPOC writers.
Christa Teston, Ph.D. is Professor of English in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy program at Ohio State University. Teston mobilizes multiple methods to study how people navigate uncertainty in technoscientific and biomedical contexts. Her first book, Bodies in Flux: Scientific Methods for Negotiating Medical Uncertainty, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2017 and won two national best book awards. Her second book, Doing Dignity: Ethical Praxis and the Politics of Care, was published in 2024 by Johns Hopkins University Press and draws on analyses of three case studies about how in/dignities emerge in contemporary caretaking contexts. Teston also directs Ohio State University’s business, professional, and technical writing courses and serves as the President of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Society.
The Cyborg Jillian Weise is a poet, novelist, video artist and disability rights activist. Cy is an Associate Professor of English at Florida State University. Cy is the author of The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007), The Colony (Soft Skull Press, 2010), The Book of Goodbyes (BOA Editions, 2013), Cyborg Detective (BOA Editions, 2019), and Give It to Alfie Tonight (Red Mare Press, 2020). During the pandemic, Cy started Borg 4 Borg Productions with the video play A Kim Deal Party. Her memoir and book of poems are forthcoming from Ecco.
Meet the Moderator
M. Remi Yergeau (they/them/theirs) is an associate professor in Communication and Media Studies. Their scholarly interests include critical disability studies, rhetoric, digital studies, trans and queer studies, and neurodiversity. Yergeau is an autistic academic. Their knowledge of the autistic internet is informed by the scholarly and the personal: they once ran a neurodiversity blog, led a student chapter of an autistic-led org, and coordinated local protests. Their book, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Duke UP), is a winner of the 2017 Modern Language Association First Book Prize, the 2019 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, and the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award.
We want to make our events accessible to all participants. ASL and CART services will be provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate or would like help filling out the RSVP form, please email Cherice Chan at chericec@umich.edu.
All are welcome and we strongly encourage undergraduate and graduate students to attend. Refreshments are provided for the first 100 attendees!
Advance registration is recommended.
Register to attend in person: https://myumi.ch/A148w
Register to attend on Zoom: https://myumi.ch/G2qgm
Meet the Panelists
Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (she/they) is a nonbinary femme autistic disabled writer, space creator and disability and transformative justice movement worker of Burgher and Tamil Sri Lankan, Irish and Galician/Roma ascent. They are the author or co-editor of ten books, including The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes and Mourning Songs, (co-edited with Ejeris Dixon) Beyond Survival; Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, Tonguebreaker, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, and Bodymap. A Lambda Award winner who has been shortlisted for the Publishing Triangle five times, she is winner of Lambda’s 2020 Jeanne Córdova Award “honoring a lifetime of work documenting the complexities of queer of color/femme/disabled experience” and a 2020 Disability Futures Fellow. Since 2009, they have been a lead performer with disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid. Raised in rust belt central Massachusetts and shaped by T’karonto and Oakland, they are currently at work building Living Altars/The Stacey Park Milbern Liberation Arts Center, a home for disabled QTBIPOC writers.
Christa Teston, Ph.D. is Professor of English in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy program at Ohio State University. Teston mobilizes multiple methods to study how people navigate uncertainty in technoscientific and biomedical contexts. Her first book, Bodies in Flux: Scientific Methods for Negotiating Medical Uncertainty, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2017 and won two national best book awards. Her second book, Doing Dignity: Ethical Praxis and the Politics of Care, was published in 2024 by Johns Hopkins University Press and draws on analyses of three case studies about how in/dignities emerge in contemporary caretaking contexts. Teston also directs Ohio State University’s business, professional, and technical writing courses and serves as the President of the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Society.
The Cyborg Jillian Weise is a poet, novelist, video artist and disability rights activist. Cy is an Associate Professor of English at Florida State University. Cy is the author of The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007), The Colony (Soft Skull Press, 2010), The Book of Goodbyes (BOA Editions, 2013), Cyborg Detective (BOA Editions, 2019), and Give It to Alfie Tonight (Red Mare Press, 2020). During the pandemic, Cy started Borg 4 Borg Productions with the video play A Kim Deal Party. Her memoir and book of poems are forthcoming from Ecco.
Meet the Moderator
M. Remi Yergeau (they/them/theirs) is an associate professor in Communication and Media Studies. Their scholarly interests include critical disability studies, rhetoric, digital studies, trans and queer studies, and neurodiversity. Yergeau is an autistic academic. Their knowledge of the autistic internet is informed by the scholarly and the personal: they once ran a neurodiversity blog, led a student chapter of an autistic-led org, and coordinated local protests. Their book, Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Duke UP), is a winner of the 2017 Modern Language Association First Book Prize, the 2019 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, and the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award.
We want to make our events accessible to all participants. ASL and CART services will be provided. If you anticipate needing accommodations to participate or would like help filling out the RSVP form, please email Cherice Chan at chericec@umich.edu.
| Building: | Weiser Hall |
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| Website: | |
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Digital Culture, digital humanities, Digital Media, Digital Studies, Digital Studies Institute, Disability |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Digital Studies Institute, Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) Program, School of Information, Department of Film, Television, and Media, Computer Science and Engineering Division, Department of American Culture, Science, Technology and Society, Multi Ethnic Student Affairs - MESA, Communication and Media, Department of English Language and Literature, Department of Political Science, Trotter Multicultural Center, Program in Computing for Arts and Science |
