All are welcome to attend this first-of-its-kind event on April 4, 2025, to be held at the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center and via Zoom.

La Marr Jurelle Bruce writes of his own disability exploration as “a procession without end, without rest, without closure,” as “always in process, always awake, always open.” In addition to an efflorescence of recent scholarship on disability studies, life writing has been central to this “procession” with works addressing issues related to disability justice, intersectional experience, destabilizing stigma, and expanding popular conversations about disability and chronic illness.

This interdisciplinary and hybrid one-day conference will be devoted to addressing individual lives, lived experiences, and the social experiences of disability and chronic illness through all forms of life expressions. With two roundtables and a conversation with renowned research scientist and MacArthur fellow Joshua Miele, the conference will address the subjective experience of disability, matters of social vulnerability and equality, and possibilities of social change affected by life writing.