When Disability and Performance Art Intersect: Making Sense With Teachers

• In Event: 16.057 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 16.057-25 - Adaptation and Expression: Arts Education and Technology

Abstract

In this paper, we take up the work of disabled performance artists who advance understanding of disability as a complicated and complex life experience. As teacher educators, our work has been informed by the arts—specifically visual and performance art that features disability and disabled artists. We draw from contemporary works that typically prove vexing for our students who have yet to consider disability at the intersection of performance and the arts. In two examples of current works by disabled performance artists (clips to be shown at the roundtable), we explore the sense students make as a result of exposure to disability arts, with an emphasis on ways of seeing disability anew outside educational discourses of deficiency, limit, and need.

Authors

• Linda P. Ware, SUNY - College at Geneseo

• Jan W. Valle, City College of New York - CUNY