Anthropology Program and Disability & Difference Presents

"Living Otherwise"

Our book, Disability Worlds, chronicles our immersion in NYC’s wide-ranging disability worlds as parents, activists, anthropologists, and disability studies scholars. Disability consciousness, we show, emerges in everyday politics, practices, and frictions, from genetic testing to the reimagining of kinship, and the perils of what some call “the disability cliff”, while highlighting the remarkable world-changing creativity of neurodiversity activists and disabled artists. In today’s talk, we will focus on a chapter entitled, “Living Otherwise” that tracks the histories and everyday practices of disability arts activists. We explored projects created by people with diverse bodyminds across a dizzying array of genres, producing new culturalimaginaries centered on disability experiences and aesthetics, reframing the very concept of artistry itself. The disability art world ranges from community theater and poetry readings in neighborhood libraries todisability arts boot camps at cultural institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the Gibney Performing Arts Center, dance at Lincoln Center, The Shed, the High Line, Broadway performances, and more.  Our research preceded and coincided with the pandemic when many activities shifted online, creating unexpected challenges and opportunities in the disability arts world. Overall, we show how participation inthe arts offers new opportunities, resources, and models for “living otherwise.”

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Faye Ginsburg is David Kriser Professor of Anthropology at New York University. She is cofounder of the NYU Center for Disability Studies and the Center for Media, Culture & History.  She is author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community, coauthor of Disability Worlds (2024) and co-editor of How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (2025), along with other books.

Rayna Rapp is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, and the author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America, coauthor of Disability Worlds, and co-editor of How to be Disabled in a Pandemic (2025), along with other books. 

For more information, call 845-758-7662, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 8:30 am – 9:50 am EDT/GMT-4

Location: Bertelsmann Campus Center, Multipurpose Room

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