Taught by David Adelman, Networked Disability Cultures is an undergraduate class offered by the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. In this class, learners work from an understanding of accessibility as a lived practice that generates embodied insights about the digital and physical world around us.
The internet has long been a space for disability community, mutual aid, and activism. Kate Ellis and Mike Kent, writing in Disability and New Media, suggest that the internet has “opened up” the world for disabled people. This course offers forth an opportunity to critically (and creatively) engage this sentiment, and others like it—what is disability culture online? Who gets to produce it? How does it get produced? What are its impacts across culture and technology? The course offers the opportunity to seriously (and playfully) engage these topics as they emerge, exist, and are debated and scrutinized online. No familiarity with disability studies is presumed or required, and we will be taking a deliberately intersectional approach to the study of disability culture(s), paying particular attention to the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class alongside disability in virtual spaces.
Our projects
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“Is My Living Space Actually Accessible?”
In this project, I want to examine the physical challenges that my apartment presents. I want to note, that this is not the Company’s issue, nor is it…
4 min read
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UM Accessibility Podcast
(Image Credit: Pratiksha Menon) Project Description: For my final project, I wanted to focus on accessibility on campus at UM. Over the semester, I have seen how big…
4 min read
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Third Spaces and Community: An A2 Focused Reflection and Audit
By Mecca Durhal Introduction / Project Description Introduction Transcript Begins Here: [time: 00:00:00] Work-life balance, as a term some of us may be familiar with, is the concept…
4 min read
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The Power of Music at the University of Michigan
By Marissa Plasencia (Image Credit: Ansfoto on Pixabay) Project Description: Throughout this podcast, I delve into University of Michigan students’ reliance on and love for music. As a…
4 min read
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The Arb: A Photo Analysis of Accessibility
By Isabelle Tiplady Project Description A key component to disability activism involves the tearing down or altering inaccessible environments to make them accessible. When most people think about…
4 min read
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Observing Access at the University of Michigan
By: Sean Vayberman (Image Credit: Pratiksha Menon) Project Description: For my final project, I decided to make a podcast and talk about everything one needs to know about…
4 min read
