Jeff Friedman - Dance, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
"Revealing Disability Aesthetics: World Traditions and Contemporary Accommodations
Disability aesthetics always already exist in a number of non-Western social formations but are currently subject to emergent accommodative conditions in the most of the Global North and West; this lecture will address a variety of existing and emergent conditions for disability aesthetics, specifically addressing shamanic, healing, and communal practices that recognize embodied variation. I will also focus in particular on historical instances of aesthetic irony, in the case of disability-related aesthetics under a previously prevailing Moral Model of Disability. Several instances of contemporary and emergent modes of disability aesthetics will then address both means of artistic production and resultant innovative business models, as well as sample practices in a variety of disability-related literary, visual and performing arts.
Jeff Friedman is a dance artist with national and international credits and a dance scholar with numerous publications and presentations. His integrated studio and theory teaching includes dance history, dance studies, improvisation, and repertory works with a special focus on oral history-based and social justice-focused documentary performance. Jeff was a performing member of Oberlin Dance Collective (ODC/San Francisco) from 1980-1989, performing nationally and internationally for a U.S. State Department tour of Southeast Asia and a tour of the Soviet Union, during the fall of the Berlin Wall in Fall 1989, among others. Jeff has also performed for the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Fe Opera Companies.
Jeff’s public scholarship includes 25 years as founding director of LEGACY, an oral history program of the San Francisco Museum of Performance & Design, with over 70 oral history research documents recorded for Bay Area dance community members, plus numerous commissioned oral histories with the School of American Ballet, among others. His peer-reviewed publications and presentations have appeared throughout the US, Canada, Argentina, the UK, France, Spain, Holland, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany, where he was a Senior Fulbright Teaching and Research Fellow, with additional projects in Turkey, Israel, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, where he was visiting lecturer at Auckland University.
IRW Distinguished Lecture Series 2026-2027 | Dissident Aesthetics and the Remaking of Life