Right around the time that we started discussing the theme for our newest blog carnival (Makerspaces and Writing Practices), queer, crafty friends of mine shared with me Melissa Rogers’ project on Hyperrhiz titled “Making Queer Love: A Kit of Odds and Ends.” I was eager to see how Rogers theorized “crafting” and what it might bring to our upcoming conversations about “making,” which often tends to be dominated by robotics, metals, circuits. Rogers’s work raised some really important questions for me about people invested in both crafting and making–and what it means to bring them into academic spaces. Her work…
Author: Neil Simpkins
After falling into a Tumblr community of disabled folks over years of blogging, I found myself interested in the digital rhetorical practices of disabled communities. Sites like Tumblr and Twitter, where I chattered, complained, rejoiced, and cried with folks like me going through the ringer of being disabled and trying to make life work, showed me how different digital communities create their own rhetorical practices and use technology in cripped (click here to read Sami Schalk’s definition and nuancing of this term) ways to communicate with each other and with the normate world. I find this process fascinating and want…