Gracen Brilmyer
Assistant Professor
Pronouns: they/them
PhD, Department of Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Dissertation:
MIMS, School of Information, University of California Berkeley
BA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
My research, located at the intersection of critical archival studies and disability studies, focuses on the ways in which disabled, sick, mad, chronically ill, blind, d/Deaf, neurodivergent, and other disabled people use, experience, and understand themselves through archives as well as how we can tell histories of disability when there is little or no archival evidence. Part of my research uses interviews with disabled people to understand the affective impacts of archival material and spaces. This empirical research is complimented by historical / archival research that looks for disabled people in history, specifically within听the history of natural history museums and their archives.听Through a critical disability studies lens, I tease out the ways in which archival processes impact what we can and cannot find in archives as well as trace the conflation of disability, race, and animality within natural history to center inquiry on how ableism is a central tenet of colonialism. Outside academia, I am involved in disability justice, design justice, and social justice technologies.
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- GLIS 607
Brilmyer, Gracen, and Crystal Lee. 2023. 鈥淭erms of Use: Crip Legibility in Information Systems.鈥� First Monday, January..
Brilmyer, Gracen. 鈥淭oward a Crip Provenance: Centering Disability in Archives through Its Absence.鈥� Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 9, no. 1 (February 17, 2022). .
Brilmyer, Gracen Mikus. 鈥溾�業鈥檓 Also Prepared to Not Find Me. It鈥檚 Great When I Do, but It Doesn鈥檛 Hurt If I Don鈥檛鈥�: Crip Time and Anticipatory Erasure for Disabled Archival Users.鈥� Archival Science, October 18, 2021. .
Brilmyer, Gracen. 鈥溾�楾hey Weren鈥檛 Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in Mind鈥�: The Affect of Archival In/Accessibility and 鈥楨motionally Expensive鈥� Spatial Un/Belonging鈥� Archivaria, December 5, 2022, 120鈥�53.
Gabiola, Joyce, Gracen Brilmyer, Michelle Caswell, and Jimmy Zavala. 鈥溾�業t鈥檚 a Trap鈥�: Complicating Representation in Community-Based Archives.鈥� The American Archivist 85, no. 1 (July 1, 2022): 60鈥�87. .
Brilmyer, Gracen.听2020. 鈥淭owards Sickness: Developing a Critical Disability Archival Methodology.鈥� Journal of Feminist Scholarship 17 (17): 26鈥�45.听
Brilmyer, Gracen, Joyce Gabiola, Jimmy Zavala, Michelle Caswell. 鈥淩eciprocal Archival Imaginaries: The shifting boundaries of 鈥渃ommunity鈥� in community archives.鈥� Archivaria 88 (November 14, 2019): 6鈥�48.
Brilmyer, Gracen.听鈥淎rchival Assemblages: Applying Disability Studies鈥� Political/Relational Model to Archival Description.鈥澨鼳rchival Science, April 2, 2018, 1鈥�24. .
Michelle Caswell with graphic design by:听Brilmyer, Gracen.鈥淭eaching to Dismantle White Supremacy in Archives.鈥澨齌he Library Quarterly 87, no. 3 (June 8, 2017): 222鈥�35. .