Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

S. Hollis Mickey lives with severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) while creating art, poetry, and the Instagram series #HollisObscuredByFruitsAndVegetables to raise awareness about ME and ableism. Applying my working theory of creative mourning, this paper explores how Mickey uses her platform to educate, build Crip Kinship, and confront ableism.

Paper Abstract:

S. Hollis Mickey is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator, and adventurer. She is also chronically ill and disabled, navigating life with severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), an illness that has left her bed- and homebound. Despite these challenges, Mickey leverages her limited energy to create poignant art, poetry, music, and a visually striking Instagram series, #HollisObscuredByFruitsAndVegetables, which merges aesthetic beauty with profound metaphor. Through social media and creative expression, she highlights the realities of living with ME, raising awareness about the insidious impacts of ableism on those with complex disabilities. This work is situated in conversation with scholars intersecting folklore and disability studies such as Theresa Milbrodt, Andrea Kitta, and Ann Millett-Gallant. Influenced by scholars like Henry Glassie, Deborah Kapchan, Lambros Malafouris, and Gillie Bolton, I contribute a theory that weaves together disability studies, art therapy, folklore of material culture, performance theory, and material engagement theory. I propose creative mourning; a working theory that captures the active entanglement of grief and loss, which I define as the performance of grief through making and through an “exchange of energy, emotion, and material” (Kapchan 2010, 133). Ultimately, this paper looks back through the window in which Mickey looks out at the world, and in so doing, explores how one person visualizes disability, uses her platform to create opportunities for education and Crip Kinship, and expresses joy through energy transformed into eclectic and transformative music and melody.

Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

Disability scholars critique “overcoming narratives” as suggesting disability can be conquered, and ignoring the complexity of individual disability experiences. This presentation explores alternative options of disability narratives that encourage flexibility, fluidity, and community.

Paper Abstract:

Disability scholars have long critiqued “overcoming narratives,” suggesting disability isn’t something that can be “conquered” since that notion takes complexity out of disability experiences. Overcoming narratives simplify disability stories to be ones of individual triumph, ignoring facets such as the variability of disability, web of community and social supports required by many disabled people, and the idea that disability can be part of one’s identity and isn’t necessarily something that can or should be overcome.

This creative and critical presentation will explore options for new kinds of disability narratives that encourage variation, flexibility and fluidity. Using the work of scholars such as Eli Clare and Arthur Frank, as well as my own experiences with disability and in disability communities, I will suggest the benefits to narratives that interrogate definitions and types of disability rather than striving for a specific outcome. Such frameworks can shift and expand definitions of what it means to recover, heal, and adapt. These narratives can also address the more chaotic and unpredictable aspects of disability (and indeed all bodies), such as flares and recurring episodes of decreased ability. I will argue that such narratives allow space for people with disabilities to tell their stories as they see fit and embrace the shifting nature of bodies, focusing on adaptation, flexibility, and community support and understanding.

Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

The Independent Living movement in Sweden are using counter-narratives to highlight society's shortcomings when it comes to accessibility for persons with disabilities. How can this counter-narratives be seen as a powerful tool to unwriting ableism? And are the narratives modern disability folklore?

Paper Abstract:

The Independent Living movement in Sweden (their name in Sweden: GIL) has done a number of notable happenings over the years. To name a few: Cripple crap wipes, Fuckers who function, Retard beer, Said by retards (https://www.gil.se/gils-kampanjer/). They are always public, and they often receive a lot of attention both publicly in the city and in various media. The Independent Living movement are also good at using social media to spread their message. What these happenings have in common is that they put up a counter-narratives who questions societies inaccessibility for persons with disability. In for example “Said by retards” short Instragram-films was posted to turn concepts about disability upside down. Or as they write themselves: “Who are the real retards?” In this way, they actively create their own stories that have the possibility to become powerful tools to retract, or rewrite, such things that have been inscribed into society. It becomes a possibility to reshape, but also create another opportunity for who is represented. In this paper I want to argue that this counter-narratives becomes modern disability folklore that can be powerful tools to fight ableism. But how can these counter-narratives be seen as a powerful tool? And in what way are the narratives unwriting ableism? A possibility to answer these questions, is to consider these counter-narratives as modern disability folklore. Or as an Folklore Activism (Kodish 2011).

Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

This study critically examines go-along interviews with visually disabled individuals, highlighting the ableist assumptions embedded in walking methods. Combining sit-down and go-along interviews, it reveals methodological and ethical challenges, advocating for inclusive, flexible approaches to explore non-visual spatial experiences.

Paper Abstract:

Although the interest in walking methods in disability research is growing, their methodological pitfalls are rarely addressed. While go-along interviews are celebrated for capturing micro-geographies and embodied experiences, their design assumes ableist norms of walking, talking, and spatial movement, presenting unique methodological and ethical challenges when working with visually disabled participants. Combining sit-down and go-along interviews with fourteen legally blind individuals, the conference contribution uncovers how these challenges reveal deeper tensions between research methodologies and lived experience.

The research exposes power asymmetries between sighted researchers and blind participants, necessitating careful planning, negotiation, and situated ethical improvisation to ensure participants’ autonomy and safety. Unexpected situations—such as disrupted navigation, researcher interventions, and misaligned anticipations—highlight the inadequacy of standardized methods for individuals who defy spatial norms. Recognizing this, the contribution reimagines go-alongs as a “laboratory” for co-creating knowledge, allowing researchers to critically confront ableist methodologies as well as anti-methodologies as presented by post-qualitative inquiry.

This study underscores the importance of mutual understanding, flexible methods, and situated ethics to explore non-visual dimensions of space while respecting participants’ experience and needs. By bridging disability geography and poststructuralist theory, it demonstrates how go-along interviews can challenge dominant visual-centric paradigms, offering a constructivist approach to urban space. The study findings provide practical guidance for conducting mobile methods with disabled individuals, encouraging researchers to critically engage with the ableism embedded in research practices. This approach not only advances inclusivity in geographic inquiry but also generates new epistemological insights into the co-creation of space and movement.

Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

An argument for the storying of personal experiences of disability through contemporary performance storytelling as an effective ethnographic methodology for unwriting ableism within folk narratives. An autoethnographic comparative analysis of creative process and outcomes of disabled storytellers.

Paper Abstract:

As a disabled traditional storyteller and folklorist, much of my academic and creative practice centres around unwriting ableist folklore through scholarly research and experimental storytelling performance. In written form, folk narrative is divorced from oral context, static, rather than a fluid element of the carrying stream. Similarly, within the textbook, doctors report and written ethnography disability experiences are medicalised and depersonalised, separated from the holistic perception of the disabled individual within their cultural context. Storying disability experiences makes context indivisible, and content accessible to scholarly, disabled and general audiences alike.

This paper argues storying personal experiences of disability is an effective ethnographic mythology for unwriting ableism in folk narratives. Using autoethnographical and fieldwork evidence, this paper will demonstrate performance-based ethnography allows for dialectical thinking, the centring of lived experience and the retention of the inherent orality of traditional narrative, creating a site of radical unwriting.

My methodology will utilise the theoretical frameworks of intersectional disability scholarship such as Radner and Lasers theories of encodement and the work of Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Elizabeth Donaldson to analyse creative experiences of disabled traditional storytellers working with ableist narratives. My autoethnographical approach is based on reflexive interrogation of my process creating Cassandra, a storytelling show which became a site for unwriting ableism within witchcraft folklore and storying my experiences of seizure and neurodiversity. Additional fieldwork evidence is drawn from interviews with fellow disabled creatives working with personal narratives of disability, ill health and neurodiversity and folkloric elements, including selkie, changeling and heroic tales.

Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

Unwriting ableism at the center of disability folkloristics research. Here I will tell the story of my search for methods that engage with archived folklore and brings together disability studies and folkloristics and show how combining methodologies, embodiment and emotion has created a toolkit for researching narratives of disability understandings in disability folklore.

Paper Abstract:

When doing disability folkloristics, it is important to be aware of different understandings of disability through time and place, as well as the ableism that is embedded in many research traditions. Unwriting ableism is perhaps not always the main goal of disability folkloristics, but it is at the core of our undertaking as we are constantly reminded of the power dynamics that define disability as we ascertain and showcase disability narratives, both folkloric and academic.

My search for methods that engage with archived folklore and brings together disability studies and folkloristics led me to interesting experiments. I want to retrace my steps and show how combining methodologies, embodiment and emotion has created a toolkit for researching narratives of disability understanding in folklore. From standpoint-theory to Mertens transformative research and using Garland-Thomson's staring as a method, I have gone from reading archived legends with an open mind to actively working and writing with a disabled supernatural being. I have come across and asked ethical questions of how we can work respectfully with derogative legends of real disabled people. I have used my own embodied experiences of disability to deepen the understanding of disability folklore. And finally, I have brought the personal, political and partial to the forefront to become an academic activist. What is emerging is a method-toolkit that is mindful of the pits of ableism in language and academia and embraces the personal influence of the researcher.

Send message to Author

Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation critically explores the intersection of COVID-19, Long COVID, ableism, and health care inequities in the United States, emphasizing COVID-19's role as a mass disabling event. Employing an autoethnographic approach, I reflect on my lived experiences with COVID-19 and Long COVID to highlight the diverse, often ineffable realities of individuals with disabilities. Central to this analysis is the concept of "unwriting" ableist narratives that dominate societal discourse, which involves deconstructing and reshaping these narratives to foreground disability justice and inclusion.

Paper Abstract:

This presentation critically explores the intersection of COVID-19, Long COVID, ableism, and health care inequities in the United States, emphasizing COVID-19's role as a mass disabling event that has disproportionately affected marginalized communities. Employing an autoethnographic approach, I reflect on my lived experiences with COVID-19 and Long COVID to highlight the diverse, often ineffable realities of individuals with disabilities. Central to this analysis is the concept of "unwriting" ableist narratives that dominate societal discourse, which involves deconstructing and reshaping these narratives to foreground disability justice and inclusion. Ethical considerations surrounding storytelling in the context of Long COVID are also addressed, advocating for research practices rooted in empathy and inclusivity that challenge traditional notions of objectivity and detachment. Furthermore, I propose a synergistic dialogue between disability studies and folklore studies to critically interrogate and reinterpret the cultural traditions and narratives shaped by experiences of disability, fostering a deeper understanding of disability as an integral aspect of human diversity.