August 17, 2023 Source: Instagram page of Christopher “Unpezverde” Núñez, a Visually Impaired choreographer based in NYC. “8 weeks ago I tested positive for Covid...
Read MoreDisability Covid Chronicles
Disability Covid Chronicles
The NYU Center for Disability Studies is documenting the experiences of disabled and chronically ill people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Disabled people, especially people of color and those living in nursing homes or other congregate housing, have been at greatest risk of infection and death from COVID-19. Our team is preparing an edited volume based on two years (and counting) of research and living in New York City in a state of pandemic. The sixteen chapters document disability communities that have been disproportionately impacted by city and national policies, work and housing conditions, stigma, racism, and violence as much as the virus itself. In the shadow of “risk,” we report on a variety of disability experiences including incarceration, low wage and essential work, maternal mental health, anti-Asian violence, senior centers, migrant detention centers, Long Covid, public schools, the MTA, blindness and digital accessibility, caregiving, arts workers, and the Black Lives Matter protests.
In collaboration with community members, we are also building a publicly-accessible archive to preserve memories, stories, artworks, and other materials in a range of accessible formats. We are preserving conversations on social media, records of digital public meetings, and photographs of street art and actions that are otherwise ephemeral. Our goal is to chronicle not only vulnerabilities, but creative initiatives for survival under these new conditions that are structured by old inequalities.
Research
How to be Disabled in a Pandemic
Essays & Interviews from Research-in-Progress
Fieldnotes
Our Fieldnotes section highlights notable ephemera and other materials — photographs, posters, artwork, event documentation, social media campaigns, and beyond — encountered during our research that document the experiences of diverse disabled people during the Covid-19 pandemic.
DHS’s Refusal to Release Medically Vulnerable Immigration Detainees
During the deadly first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was clear that the sheer number of people having to live in the communal space...
Read MoreRacial Bias in Ventilator Triage Guidelines
Harald Schmidt, Dorothy Roberts, and Amaka Eneanya published an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2021 (e-pub; print publication 2022) in response to...
Read MoreAlice Wong’s #N95s4UCSF: Call to Action
Alice Wong “(she/her) is a disabled activist, writer, editor, and community organizer. Alice is the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, an online community dedicated...
Read MoreShare Your Stories & Materials
In addition to the ethnographic interviews and oral histories initiated by our team of faculty and graduate students, we are eager to be in dialogue with any members of the community who wish to have their experiences preserved. Our digital repository will be preserved and made accessible by the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, a part of NYU Special Collections, at New York University.
We invite you to share your experiences in one of the following ways: Testimonials, Images & Artifacts, and Interviews / Oral Histories.