Resources – Disability Archives Lab

Lab Interviews & Outreach

Ashna Ali, Gracen Brilmyer, Travis Chi Wing Lau, and Claude Olson, The Writer’s Center, Writing Disability Intimacy, June 27, 2024
Librarypunk Podcast: Episode 094 – Disability Archives Lab Feat. Gracen Brilmyer (June 22, 2023)
Lost in the Stacks: The Research Library Rock’n’Roll Radio Show: Episode 560 – What is the Disability Archives Lab? (May 19, 2023)

Lab Publications

Brilmyer, Gracen Mikus, Veronica L. Denison, Jill K. Sadler, and Tara Brar. “‘There’s Just No Real Way to Win’: Disabled Archivists and Professionalism’s Paradox.” Archivaria, no. 98 (November 1, 2024): 102–35.
Brilmyer, Gracen. “‘Many of Whom Have Never Been and Are Like Me and Feel Alienated by It’: Access Intimacy in Archives.” In Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, edited by Alice Wong, 229–42. New York: Vintage, 2024.
Special Issue: This Feature Has Been Disabled: Critical intersections of disability and information studies, Edited by Gracen Brilmyer and Crystal Lee. First Monday, January 2023.
Brilmyer, Gracen. “‘They Weren’t Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in Mind’: The Affect of Archival In/Accessibility and ‘Emotionally Expensive’ Spatial Un/Belonging” Archivaria, December 5, 2022, 120–53.
Brilmyer, Gracen Mikus. “‘I’m Also Prepared to Not Find Me. It’s Great When I Do, but It Doesn’t Hurt If I Don’t’: Crip Time and Anticipatory Erasure for Disabled Archival Users.” Archival Science, October 18, 2021.
Brilmyer, Gracen M. “‘It Could Have Been Us in a Different Moment. It Still Is Us in Many Ways’: Community Identification and the Violence of Archival Representation of Disability.” In Sustainable Digital Communities, edited by Anneli Sundqvist, Gerd Berget, Jan Nolin, and Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad, 480–86. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020.

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Lab Presentations (2021-present)

Brilmyer, Gracen, Grace Isibor, and Sam Pappas, Association for Canadian Archivists Annual Meeting, Virtual, Future-Proofing: Centring Care Now for Disability Archives Tomorrow, June 10-13, 2024
Brilmyer, Gracen (Disability Archives Lab), Leesa Kelly (Memorialize the Movement), and Gerry Lawson (Indigitization), American Library Association Preservation week, Panel: Building better models: Responding to community needs for preserving cultural heritage materials, May 1, 2024
Brilmyer, Gracen, Cait McKinney, and Melissa J. Nelson. Crossing Fonds Symposium, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, Panel: Digital Archives and Ethics of Care, April 24 – 28, 2024
Brilmyer, Gracen. Concordia Fine Arts Reading Room, Montreal, QC Canada, Feeling through Archival Erasures of Disability, April 17, 2024
Brilmyer, Gracen, and Sam Pappas. McGill School of Information Studies Seminar Series, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Reimagining Disabled Archives: Historical Harms, Contemporary Experiences & Future Possibilities, February 29, 2023
Brilmyer, Gracen. The Archival Education and Research Initiative (AERI), Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Archiving Crip Futures // Cripping Future Archives: Conversations about new disability archives, June 19-23, 2023
Brilmyer, Gracen and Sam Pappas, l’Association des bibliothécaires du Québec – Quebec Library Association (ABQLA), Montréal, Québec, “Letting us ourselves imagine a little bit more”: Dreaming Disability Archives Differently, May 26, 2023
Brilmyer, Gracen. Strategies of Critique 2023, York University, Toronto, Canada, “Fixing” Archives: Incomplete provenance & the desire for archival cures, May 17-19, 2023
Brilmyer, Gracen. The Archives Association of Ontario Annual Conference, Virtual Conference, Disabled Labour & Professional Standards: How the archival profession impacts disabled workers, May 10-12, 2023
Brilmyer, Gracen. UnConference of the Disability Studies and Action Collaborative, Bellingham, WA, Disability & Archival Labour: Disabled Archivist’s Perspective, October 22-23, 2022
Brilmyer, Gracen, Joyce Gabiola, Nancy Godoy, and Jimmy Zavala. Virtual Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Panel: We Don’t Have a Checklist: Archival Labor(s) and Leadership of Minoritized Archivists, August 20-27, 2022
Brilmyer, Gracen. Documenting Disability: Preserving and Accessing Disabled Heritage, University of Dundee, Documenting Disability: Preserving and Accessing Disabled Heritage, Dundee, UK, Archival Affect: Feeling disability history, July 27, 2022
Brilmyer, Gracen, Veronica Denison, Michelle Ganz, and Lydia Tang. The Archival Education and Research Initiative (AERI), Panel: How We Got Here: Creating Space for Disabled Archival Workers, July 9 2022
Brar, Tara, Gracen Brilmyer, and Veronica Denison. Association for Canadian Archivists Annual Meeting, 2022, The Labour of Belonging: Disabled Archivists & Archival Work, June 17, 2022
Barclay, Jenifer, Gracen Brilmyer, Michelle Ganz, Aimi Hamraie, and Corbett O’Toole. Society of Disability Studies Annual Conference, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, Finding Disabled People in Archives, April 9-12, 2022
Brilmyer, Gracen. Provenance in Place: A Symposium, The Archival Technologies Lab at the City University of New York and the School of Information Management at Dalhousie University, Crip Provenance: Place, Space, & Disability, March 7, 2022
Brilmyer, Gracen. Archive / CounterArchive Special Lecture, Toronto, ON, “It felt like everything”: Archival Decision-Making & Impacts on Disabled Communities, February 25, 2021.
Brilmyer, Gracen, Alice Wong, and Liú Méi-Zhì Bransfield Chen. Relating Oral History 2022 Workshop Series, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, Telling and Preserving Disabled Stories, February 24, 2022
Brilmyer, Gracen. Virtual Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, Archival Access: Disabled archival users and the affect of in/accessibility, August 2-6, 2021
Brilmyer, Gracen. Disability Studies Conference 2021, Auckland, New Zealand, Accessing History: Disabled archival users and the affect of in/accessibility, July 10-12, 2021

Other Resources on Disability & Archives

Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities
Brilmyer, Gracen. “Archival Assemblages: Applying Disability Studies’ Political/Relational Model to Archival Description.” Archival Science 18, no. 2 (June 1, 2018): 95–118. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-018-9287-6.
Brilmyer, Gracen. “Towards Sickness: Developing a Critical Disability Archival Methodology.” Journal of Feminist Scholarship 17, no. 17 (January 1, 2021): 26–45. https://doi.org/10.23860/jfs.2020.17.03.
Cartwright, Ryan Lee. “Out of Sorts: A Queer Crip in the Archive.” Feminist Review 125, no. 1 (July 1, 2020): 62–69. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778920911936.
Imada, Adria L. “Promiscuous Signification: Leprosy Suspects in a Photographic Archive of Skin.” Representations 138, no. 1 (May 1, 2017): 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2017.138.1.1.
Morris, Alexandra. 2021. “A Brief Guide to Disability Terminology and Theory in Ancient World Studies.” August 30, 2021. https://classicalstudies.org/scs-blog/alexandra-morris/blog-brief-guide-disability-terminology-and-theory-ancient-world-studies.
Rinn, Meghan. “Nineteenth-Century Depictions of Disabilities and Modern Metadata: A Consideration of Material in the P. T. Barnum Digital Collection.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 5, no. 1 (March 20, 2018). https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol5/iss1/1.
Trent, James W. “Defectives at the World’s Fair: Constructing Disability in 1904.” Remedial and Special Education 19, no. 4 (July 1, 1998): 201–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/074193259801900403.
Tumlin, Zachary, Bridget Malley, Lydia Tang, Chris Tanguay, and Lauren White. “Supporting the Retention and Advancement of Archivists with Disabilities.” Archival Outlook, August 2021. https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=715946&p=8&view=issueViewer&pp=1.

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