Elizabeth Guffey Guest Lecture

The Right To Live in the World: Design and Disability

May 22, 2019, 4 p.m.
CSE 1202, Computer Science & Engineering Bldg., UC San Diego

Facebook Event

When access for disabled people began being seen as a “Civil Right,” it amounted more than protests; it meant a major re-organization of our designed world—one that has been ongoing and continues to this day. In this kind of world building, Design asserts a profound, if little recognized-- ability to assert what has been called disabled people’s “right to live in the world.”

Elizabeth Guffey works at the intersection of art, design and disability studies. Her book Designing Disability: Symbols, Space and Society (Bloomsbury) argues that designs like the International Symbol of Access or “wheelchair symbol” can alter the environment, making people more disabled or less, depending on the design’s planning and use. She is also Founding Editor of the academic journal Design and Culture. Guffey currently heads the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory at the State University of New York, Purchase College.

Elizabeth Guffey
Professor of Art & Design History
Director, MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory 
State University of New York at Purchase

Co-sponsored by Design@Large