Aimi Hamraie, “Critical Access Studies”

Date: 

Thursday, November 12, 2020, 7:30pm to 9:00pm

Location: 

Zoom meeting

Thirty years after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, much of the built environment remains inaccessible to disabled people. Accordingly, the vast majority of research and writing on accessibility seeks to convince the unconvinced of the value of inclusion. This field, which I term “Access Studies,” would benefit from greater engagement with the concepts, practices, and political commitments of critical disability studies. In this talk, I will discuss the emerging field of “Critical Access Studies,” which engages with the methodologies, epistemologies, and political commitments of accessibility from the perspectives of Disability Justice and disability culture. Using historical and contemporary examples, I will illustrate the difference that critical perspectives on disability—including intersectional perspectives—can make for architects seeking to understand design with, by, and for disabled people. This lecture will be followed by a Q&A. You may ask questions during this time using the Q&A feature on Zoom, or you may submit questions for the speaker beforehand using this link: https://harvard.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5cgj8NvqIYWA3Vr

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See also: Community, Harvard