Rethinking Bodies: Disability As a Space for Imagination

Disability is often framed as the unfortunate exception or problem to fix on the periphery, but what would happen if we brought disability to the center of the conversation? Rebekah Taussig grew up believing that her disabled body made her an outsider and disqualified her from some of the most fundamental parts of being human. In this talk, she resists that narrative, exploring how our perspectives might expand if we brought disability to the center. How might our understanding of beauty, love and romance, movement, work, and storytelling evolve and transform? What new possibilities might unfurl as we imagine together?

Rebekah Taussig is a Kansas City writer and teacher with her doctorate in Creative Nonfiction and Disability Studies. She has led workshops at the University of Michigan, the University of Kansas, and Davidson College on disability representation, identity, and community. Her work appears in publications from TIME and The Florida Review to Design*Sponge and Good Company. Released by HarperOne in August 2020, her memoir in essays, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body provides a nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most. She also runs the Instagram platform @sitting_pretty, where she crafts “mini-memoirs” to contribute nuance to the collective narratives being told about disability. She lives in a tiny, old house with her fussy family of tenderhearted snugglers. You can follow her work and sign up for her newsletter at www.rebekahtaussig.com.