Many things. This post is going to mostly be updates about "I did X, Y, and Z" this summer.
I went to the Computers and Writing annual conference in May, as you might be able to guess from the fact that the last post on here is my notes for one of the sessions. While there, I participated in the digital rhetoric collaboratives wiki quest, and I was one of the winners from that. As such, I got a book! Yay, books! I also reviewed two sessions for the collaborative: D5: Disability and universal access, where I got to watch Sam Harvey be awesome about demolishing the nonsense that is most applications of theory of mind. I've written a little bit about turning the concept inside out, a while back, when I asked if Autistic people might spend more time and effort guessing the mental states of others than neurotypical people do, and Sam seemed to be focusing on the ways the concept and rhetoric around it get applied as an oppressive force. I also got to meet Dani, another autistic academic, who then proceeded to write about me as the "Friend." That was cool too.
The other session I reviewed was F8: Refashioning and reimagining community identities: Performance and online spaces. That was cool because both panelists were members of the communities they were doing research about, and they got to talk about issues related to that, plus they just had really interesting projects to talk about.
I also presented about plainer language in calls for participation as an important thing- the idea of nothing about us without us includes making it so we can understand the questions being asked and therefore know what even to contribute! And then I chaired a panel after that, which was cool. Back to back panels on the last day of the conference for the win!
Shortly thereafter, I went to the Society for Disability Studies (SDS) annual conference. I was on the Digital Access Facilitation Team (DAFT) which was fun and worthwhile but also exhausting. And, just like at Computers and Writing, I was on back to back panels on the last day of the conference (this time immediately followed by tweeting two panels in a row for DAFT.) Here, one panel was on my more scholarly stuff, wanting to create software based around treating disability related language issues as a translation problem rather than something that the disabled person is 100% responsible for "fixing." The other was more on the activisty side of my stuff, talking about some experiences with disclosure on a panel with a pile of other autistic people.
Also at the SDS conference, we got to see Autonomous Press launch. I was at the launch party reminding everyone ever that I did the cover art for Typed Words, Loud Voices. On that note, did I mention that I did said cover art? It's a good book. Since my birthday is coming up, I will say that people who want to do a thing for my birthday are more than welcome to go get a copy for themselves or to donate to a library that will put it on their shelves. Given the funding structure for the upcoming Spoon Knife anthology and my plans to submit to it, this is even a semi-directly self-interested idea for what you can do! (Yeah, if I get a piece into Spoon Knife, I get more for it if more people buy Typed Words. I have a vested interest in people getting it, beyond also honestly wanting more people to read it.)
I wrote an abstract and submitted a piece for the INSPIRe annual virtual conference, entitled "Democratizing Disability Innovation." I plan to edit that piece and send it... somewhere. Not sure where yet, but I think it's worth sending somewhere. I started working on my piece for Spoon Knife. I did some editing on my piece on the translation (or cognitive interpretation, since that's a word that some autistic people use for it when they get a handy dandy friend to do this translation and support for them, see Kassiane's piece,) in the hopes of getting it into a journal. I really need to transcript the presentations I gave at the conferences, but ugh auditory processing issues are a thing. Making transcripts of my own talks, even with good recordings, is not easy, and I suspect that I actually have meh recordings. Oh well, it needs done so I will get it done. And then I'll post about it when it happens, since I'm pretty sure this is where said transcripts are going. At the least, it's one of the places.
In the last few days, Kerima made an important post about appropriation and erasure in activism, with a good bit of the focus on two good friends of mine, Lydia and Kassiane, because they are Autistic people of color, Lydia genderqueer and Kassiane a woman. This is relevant to "what Alyssa did this summer" because Lydia and Kassiane are friends, but also because Kerima linked to a post of mine for documentation and explanation on one of the issues, which means "got linked in an important post" is a literal partial answer to the question.
I went to the Computers and Writing annual conference in May, as you might be able to guess from the fact that the last post on here is my notes for one of the sessions. While there, I participated in the digital rhetoric collaboratives wiki quest, and I was one of the winners from that. As such, I got a book! Yay, books! I also reviewed two sessions for the collaborative: D5: Disability and universal access, where I got to watch Sam Harvey be awesome about demolishing the nonsense that is most applications of theory of mind. I've written a little bit about turning the concept inside out, a while back, when I asked if Autistic people might spend more time and effort guessing the mental states of others than neurotypical people do, and Sam seemed to be focusing on the ways the concept and rhetoric around it get applied as an oppressive force. I also got to meet Dani, another autistic academic, who then proceeded to write about me as the "Friend." That was cool too.
The other session I reviewed was F8: Refashioning and reimagining community identities: Performance and online spaces. That was cool because both panelists were members of the communities they were doing research about, and they got to talk about issues related to that, plus they just had really interesting projects to talk about.
I also presented about plainer language in calls for participation as an important thing- the idea of nothing about us without us includes making it so we can understand the questions being asked and therefore know what even to contribute! And then I chaired a panel after that, which was cool. Back to back panels on the last day of the conference for the win!
Shortly thereafter, I went to the Society for Disability Studies (SDS) annual conference. I was on the Digital Access Facilitation Team (DAFT) which was fun and worthwhile but also exhausting. And, just like at Computers and Writing, I was on back to back panels on the last day of the conference (this time immediately followed by tweeting two panels in a row for DAFT.) Here, one panel was on my more scholarly stuff, wanting to create software based around treating disability related language issues as a translation problem rather than something that the disabled person is 100% responsible for "fixing." The other was more on the activisty side of my stuff, talking about some experiences with disclosure on a panel with a pile of other autistic people.
Also at the SDS conference, we got to see Autonomous Press launch. I was at the launch party reminding everyone ever that I did the cover art for Typed Words, Loud Voices. On that note, did I mention that I did said cover art? It's a good book. Since my birthday is coming up, I will say that people who want to do a thing for my birthday are more than welcome to go get a copy for themselves or to donate to a library that will put it on their shelves. Given the funding structure for the upcoming Spoon Knife anthology and my plans to submit to it, this is even a semi-directly self-interested idea for what you can do! (Yeah, if I get a piece into Spoon Knife, I get more for it if more people buy Typed Words. I have a vested interest in people getting it, beyond also honestly wanting more people to read it.)
I wrote an abstract and submitted a piece for the INSPIRe annual virtual conference, entitled "Democratizing Disability Innovation." I plan to edit that piece and send it... somewhere. Not sure where yet, but I think it's worth sending somewhere. I started working on my piece for Spoon Knife. I did some editing on my piece on the translation (or cognitive interpretation, since that's a word that some autistic people use for it when they get a handy dandy friend to do this translation and support for them, see Kassiane's piece,) in the hopes of getting it into a journal. I really need to transcript the presentations I gave at the conferences, but ugh auditory processing issues are a thing. Making transcripts of my own talks, even with good recordings, is not easy, and I suspect that I actually have meh recordings. Oh well, it needs done so I will get it done. And then I'll post about it when it happens, since I'm pretty sure this is where said transcripts are going. At the least, it's one of the places.
In the last few days, Kerima made an important post about appropriation and erasure in activism, with a good bit of the focus on two good friends of mine, Lydia and Kassiane, because they are Autistic people of color, Lydia genderqueer and Kassiane a woman. This is relevant to "what Alyssa did this summer" because Lydia and Kassiane are friends, but also because Kerima linked to a post of mine for documentation and explanation on one of the issues, which means "got linked in an important post" is a literal partial answer to the question.
