Events and Programs

The DSI is hosting a 2024 summer curriculum development program for Wake Forest faculty titled, “Disability Studies Across the Curriculum.” Learn more and apply here.

Film Screening: Code of the Freaks, Annenberg Auditorium, Carswell Hall, March 28 @ 5PM
The film analyzes representations of disability and disabled people in Hollywood films from Tod Browning’s Freaks to Guillermo del Toro’s Shape of Water. Moving beyond the question of casting, the film investigates the stereotypical, harmful narratives of disability in film: the framing of disability as “inspiration,” the portrayal of villains as disabled, the celebration of the death of a disabled character as a happy ending. By centering disabled voices – disabled actors, visual artists, novelists, comedians, as well as scholars of disability – it provides a critically needed intervention into discussions around film plots and representations.
The film screening will be followed by Q&A with one of the film’s creators and producers, Dr. Alyson Patsavas.
Organized by Michaela Appeltova, Assistant Professor of History.

Building Disability Studies Across Disciplines, March 29, 1:00-2:30PM, Carswell Hall 118
Conversation for for interested faculty and staff about the successes and challenges of building and sustaining disability studies across schools and disciplines. Light lunch served, please email appeltm@wfu.edu for any dietary preferences and/or restrictions, as well as accommodations:
DSI will be joined by Alyson Patsavas, Assistant Professor in the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Her scholarship focuses on cultural discourses of pain, chronic illness, trauma, and disability. Patsavas is a writer and producer on the documentary film Code of the Freaks (2020). She co-edited “Crip Pandemic Life: A Tapestry,” found in Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. Her book, Pain in Relation: On Cripistemology, Chronicity, and Crip Evidence, has won the 2023 Tobin Siebers Prize and is forthcoming from Michigan University Press.
Organized by Michaela Appeltova, Assistant Professor of History.