“Disability is not a brave struggle or courage in the face of adversity. Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.”—Neil Marcus 

We at the Disability Studies Initiative remember the life and work of poet, actor and playwright Neil Marcus, who passed away last November. 

Marcus proudly embraced his dystonia, a hyperkinetic neurological disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions which result in tremor-like movements, becoming a leader in the disability culture movement. 

But we are especially proud that the work he is perhaps best known for, Storm Reading, was first performed in Santa Barbara at the Lobero Theater in 1988.  It then travelled across the United States for the next eight years. As he notes in the play, “Some people, when they see my twisted frame, dystonic disarray, embrace the storm… their eyes light up and they rush to hug me as a long-lost brother, as if embracing a storm was food for their soul. I can teach you to read a storm.” 

His commitment to disability culture was sustained and deep. As he put it it in one of his poems from 2014:

“If there was a country called Disabled, I would be from there.
I live disabled culture, eat disabled food, make disabled love,
Cry disabled tears, climb disabled mountains and tell disabled stories.”

The third and final installment of the series on Disability Studies (DS) organized by the Graduate Center for Literary Research, the “Cripping UCSB” Distinguished Faculty Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, Professor in Social Justice Education at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Her lecture is entitled “Humanity’s Edge: Encounters though Disability Studies” and will take place November 10, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm PST on Zoom.

The event will take place virtually, on Zoom (with closed captioning), and have an ASL interpreter. All are welcome to attend.

Dr. Titchkosky has extensively taught and written in the area of disability studies for more than twenty years. Her approach to Disability Studies (DS) is informed by cultural studies and interpretive sociology supported by Black, feminist, and queer studies of a phenomenological ilk. She is concerned with how human lives are made meaningful and how University work and life produces particularly limited and limiting conceptions of disability and humanity. Some of her books include *Disability, Self, and Society* (2003), *Reading and Writing Disability Differently* (2007) and *The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning* (2011).

Santa Barbara and the UCSB community assumed an early and significant role in moving toward an equitable and inclusive approach toward disability rights. Access Theatre was a non-profit theatre organization so they largely depended on the generosity of Lobrero Theatre in Santa Barbara. For more on this history, see the online exhibit of archives from the Independent Living Resource Center (Isla Vista, CA) at the UCSB Library‘s online site.