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Hybrid Roundtable & Book Launch – Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Liveable Worlds

Purple poster for Activist Affordances Book Launch and Roundtable

Hybrid book launch+roundtable! Our lab director Arseli Dokumaci will be in conversation with Faye Ginsburg, Alison Kafer and Jonathan Sterne about her book “Activist Affordances”. AIM members will moderate the event. Do not miss! 😍

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This roundtable and book launch provides an occasion to engage, discuss and celebrate Dr. Arseli Dokumaci’s new book, Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds (Duke UP, 2023). The event will begin with short presentations by roundtable participants, followed by a conversation among the panelists with the author, moderated by members of the Access in the Making (AIM) Lab. Following a break, we will reconvene for a broader Q&A with all in attendance.

The roundtable will be followed by a book launch and reception with food and drinks, and book sale. Please bring cash to purchase a copy of the book. All proceeds of the book sales will be donated to earthquake survivors in Turkey.

Image description: A purple poster with four stills of a disabled person’s ingenious micro choreography of putting a mug on the table, illustrating an “Activist Affordances: How disabled people improvise more habitable worlds” – also the title of the book. Text info reads: Hybrid roundtable + book launch, May 31st 4-6 pm, Arseli Dokumaci in conversation with Alison Kafer, Faye Ginsburg, and Jonathan Sterne. At the bottom are AIM Lab and Feminist Media Studio logos.

Poster design: Roi Saade

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This roundtable and book launch provides an occasion to engage, discuss and celebrate Dr. Arseli Dokumaci’s new book, Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds (Duke UP, 2023). The event will begin with short presentations by roundtable participants, followed by a conversation among the panelists with the author, moderated by members of the Access in the Making (AIM) Lab. Following a break, we will reconvene for a broader Q&A with all in attendance.

The roundtable will be followed by a book launch and reception with food and drinks, and book sale. Please bring cash to purchase a copy of the book. All proceeds of the book sales will be donated to earthquake survivors in Turkey.

Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/activist-affordances-how-disabled-people-improvise-more-livable-worlds-tickets-615841627887

Accessibility information: The roundtable event will be hybrid (Zoom + in person), and ASL interpretation will be provided. The SHIFT center is wheelchair accessible. For in person participants, please note also that masks will be mandatory in the seminar space to keep people safe. The reception and shared food will take place in a separate space, where those in attendance can unmask to eat, drink, and socialize. If you have any other access needs, please email info@accessinthemaking.ca at least ten days prior to the event.

Arseli Dokumaci is an interdisciplinary scholar and media-maker. Her scholarly and creative work lies at the crossovers of disability studies, performance studies and medical anthropology. Arseli is the director of AIM Lab, and the author of Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Livable Worlds (Duke UP, 2023). 

Faye Ginsburg is a Professor of Anthropology at NYU Arts and Science, and Co-Chair of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. She is an American anthropologist who has devoted her life to the exploration of different cultures and individuals’ styles of life.

Alison Kafer is the Embrey Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and English at the University of Texas at Austin, where she also directs the LGBTQ Studies program. She co-edited Crip Genealogies(Duke UP, 2023) with Mel Y. Chen, Julie Avril Minich, and Eunjung Kim, and she is the author of Feminist, Queer, Crip (Indiana, 2013).

Jonathan Sterne is Professor and James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University.  He has written widely on the history of sound and other topics, and is currently at work on projects dealing with signal processing, impairment phenomenology, and recent transformations in musical instruments. Publications include MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke UP, 2012), The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge, 2012), The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke UP, 2003).

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We acknowledge that this event takes place at Concordia University, which is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtià:ke/Montréal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community.

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Images of Hybrid Roundtable & Book Launch held at the SHIFT Centre.
Image 1: Arseli at a table holding a microphone. Beside her are Jonathan Sterne and Prakash Krishnan. On a large screen behind her is a Zoom room with Alison Kafer, Faye Ginsberg, and ASL interpreters.
Image 2: A view of the audience from the point of view of the speakers. The room is filled with people seated on foldable chairs.
Image 3: Another view of the room, this time framing the audience watching the screen where Fay Ginsburg is speaking.
Image 4: A group portrait of AIM Lab members Rachel Rozanski, Dresda Emma Méndez de la Brena, Sabrina Ward-Kimola, Nicholas Goberdhan, and Prakash Krishnan.
Image 5: A picutre of Sabrina sitting at the book sale table with number copies of Activist Affordances stacked in neat piles atop a quilt with a multicoloured argyle pattern.