Disability Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

Fascism’s Body Politics

A conversation with Dagmar Herzog on disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

November 25, 2025 • by Dagmar Herzog and Adam Koehler Brown

"How do we recognize a fascism when we see one?" This is the opening line from Dagmar Herzog's new book, The New Fascist Body (Wirklichkeit Books, 2025). A leading historian of sexuality, disability, and German politics, Herzog now turns her attention to the frightening continuities between past and present authoritarian forces. ...

Disability

Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair

Cripnormativity rewards crips like Abbott for distancing themselves from other disabled people

June 10, 2025 • by Andrew Joseph Pegoda

On July 14, 1984, an 8,000-pound oak tree fell down in the River Oaks suburb of Houston, Texas. The tree stuck a young man out doing one of his favorite pastimes—running—leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. But the young man, who had just received a law degree from Vanderbilt ...

Disability

Shakespeare’s Ultimate Crip Text

In a new Richard III, populism is the pathology

September 10, 2024 • by Antoinette Burton

When I bought my ticket for this summer’s production of Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Globe Theater in London, I chose a seat under cover of the rafters rather than a place standing directly in front of the stage—a distinction designed to echo the several ways that Elizabethans could experience ...

Podcast

Why the Blind Should Lead the Blind

A conversation with Andrew Leland about the history and politics of disability and his book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight

December 11, 2023 • by Claire Potter

Visually disabled people increasingly turn to institutions and support networks that are created, designed, and implemented by other blind people....

Disability

Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity

In an excerpt from The Architecture of Disability, the author considers the performance of disability in so-called “nature”

October 25, 2023 • by David Gissen

Challenging the physical inaccessibility of national parks might be reimagined as an opportunity to demonstrate the artifice of American nature more broadly. If disability rights are ultimately human rights, then the ideas presented here suggest new, unimagined alliances....

Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity

Activism

Andrew Leland in Conversation about The Country of the Blind

For some blind people, a white cane must be brandished with pride, never folded or disguised

October 23, 2023 • by Andrew Leland and Mitchell Abidor

In The Country of the Blind, Leland describes his experiences among the blind, including a course in which he artificially lives in the total blindness that will one day be his. ...

Andrew Leland in Conversation about <em>The Country of the Blind</em>

Politics

Dan Crenshaw’s Eye

As he recovers from sight-saving surgery, will the second-term Texas congressman reflect on the health insurance that other Americans don’t have?

April 12, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Last week, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R, TX-2) sent out a quietly heartbreaking press release. It notified constituents and colleagues that Crenshaw would be temporarily out of commission as doctors work to save his one partially-functioning eye. OK, you may not like Crenshaw very much: I don’t. He is a Trump baby, elected ...

Past Present

Larry Kramer, Playwright and AIDS Activist

Past Present Podcast, Episode 233

June 16, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Pioneering AIDS activist Larry Kramer died this month. Natalia referred to this Vulture interview about Kramer’s legacy. Neil commented on Kramer’s autobiographical play, The Normal Heart. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia recommended the Netflix documentary, Crip Camp: A ...

Disability

The Disability Paradox

Further thoughts on inequality, disability, and the imaginal

October 14, 2015 • by Zachary Sunderman

Do you have a disability? Do you want to work? This seemingly innocent pairing of questions should immediately raise a red flag, for it is technically oxymoronic: in the United States, the disabled, by definition, are those who cannot work, at least in any significant sense. Granted, ...

Disability

Invisible Privilege, Unspoken Racism

From street transactions to the NYSED disability campaign

October 12, 2015 • by Chiara Bottici

I spent most of my summer on the Italian coast, in the little town where I was born, as I do almost every year. The difference, this time, was that I had not been back to my home country for a whole year. This gave me some sort of a ...

Disability

Fascism’s Body Politics

A conversation with Dagmar Herzog on disability under fascism in her new book, The New Fascist Body

Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair

Cripnormativity rewards crips like Abbott for distancing themselves from other disabled people

Shakespeare’s Ultimate Crip Text

In a new Richard III, populism is the pathology

Why the Blind Should Lead the Blind

A conversation with Andrew Leland about the history and politics of disability and his book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight

Wilderness, Urban Landscapes, and Biocapacity

In an excerpt from The Architecture of Disability, the author considers the performance of disability in so-called “nature”

Andrew Leland in Conversation about The Country of the Blind

For some blind people, a white cane must be brandished with pride, never folded or disguised

Larry Kramer, Playwright and AIDS Activist

Past Present Podcast, Episode 233

Invisible Privilege, Unspoken Racism

From street transactions to the NYSED disability campaign

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