Stories of Disability Liberation in Eastern Europe: Art, Migration, (De)institutionalization, and Ecology

Session Submission Type: Panel

Affiliate Organization: Working Group on Disability Studies

Brief Description

Disability liberation requires the dismantling of the physical, emotional, epistemic, and cultural structures that devalue and damage disabled lives. This panel brings together four studies of disability liberation – fragile, messy, and contested - from East-Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe to explore what disability liberation looks like, and where it is needed. Ultimately, this panel showcases the diverse ways that disabled people in Eastern Europe, including Serbian asylum survivors in the 1890s, d/Deaf Polish filmmakers in the 1990s, and Ukrainian refugees and Czech people with inflammatory bowel diseases in the 2020s, navigate ableist systems and act as agents in their own legal, physical, cultural, bodily, and epistemic liberation.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Maria Cristina Galmarini, College of William & Mary

Papers

• Deaf Cinema In Post-Communist Poland - Magdalena Zdrodowska, Jagiellonian U (Poland)

• Biological Citizenship across Borders: Experiences of Disabled Ukrainian Refugees in the EU - Sarah Drue Phillips, Indiana U Bloomington

• Living In-Flame: Crip Guts and More than Human Multiplicity - Katerina Kolarova, Charles U in Prague (Czech Republic)

• The Aftermath of Madness: Leaving the Belgrade and Sarajevo Asylums, c.1861-1914 - Isabelle Avakumovic-Pointon, U of British Columbia (Canada)

Discussant

• Maria Cristina Galmarini, College of William & Mary