Interview – Resources provided by Elizabeth McLain

As part of the podcast series, “ArtsAbly in Conversation,” Diane Kolin interviewed Elizabeth McLain, Assistant Professor of Musicology and Director of Disability Studies at Virginia Tech.

This post presents the resources that Elizabeth McLain mentioned during the conversation.

Elizabeth McLain

Elizabeth McLain is Assistant Professor of Musicology and Director of Disability Studies at Virginia Tech. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A. in Musicology at the University of Michigan. A proud Hokie, McLain earned a B.A. in Music and a B.A. in History at Virginia Tech. As a transdisciplinary scholar, McLain has two research areas. Her work on music and spirituality since 1870 confronts assumptions about secularization by deciphering the spiritual and religious references in modernist and postmodernist musical compositions. Devout, skeptical, mystical, or manipulative, a composer’s spiritual journey remains relevant to understanding their works. Her doctoral dissertation was supported by a Lurcy Fellowship.

Read more about Elizabeth McLain

Music and Disability Studies Group

Official Study Group of the American Musicological Society (AMS) presenting the work of scholars with interdisciplinary interests in music and disability studies. Other groups with similar interests include the Disability and Music Interest Group of the Society for Music Theory (SMT) and the Special Interest Group (SIG) for Disability and Deaf Studies of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM).

Read more about the Music and Disability Studies Group

Inaccessible Musicology movement on Facebook (#InaccessibleMusicology)

Records of Access Fails in musicology. Speaking up is the first step to making change. Access is broad, and this group understands it broadly (disability, race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, socioeconomic, parenting status, & more).

Visit the Inaccessible Musicology Facebook group

RAMPD

RAMPD (Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities) is a professional platform equipping the music and live entertainment industry with disability inclusive tools, programming and strategy. RAMPD also connects the industry to a global directory of peer-vetted music/sound creators and industry professionals with disabilities, neurodivergence and other chronic or mental health conditions, to find source and hire—bringing competitive opportunities, visibility and community to our Professional Members while offering disability inclusion to Industry/Venue partners. RAMPD’s Mission is to amplify Disability Culture, promote equitable inclusion, and advocate for inclusive and accessible spaces in the music and live entertainment industries. Founded in May of 2021 (and established January 2022) by award-winning recording artist and cultural activist Lachi, RAMPD came about after a public talk between the Recording Academy and several disabled artists revealed the serious lack of visibility, access, and representation for music professionals with disabilities.

Visit RAMPD’s website

Visit Elizabeth McLain’s RAMPD profile

Gaelynn Lea

Since winning NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2016, Gaelynn Lea has captivated audiences around the world with her haunting original songs and traditional fiddle tunes. Over the years, she has collaborated and performed with many notable artists such as Michael Stipe (REM), The Decemberists, Wilco, LOW, and the industrial rock supergroup Pigface. In 2022, Gaelynn Lea composed and recorded the original score for Macbeth on Broadway, starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga. Thanks to a recent Whippoorwill Arts Fellowship, her theatrically-inspired soundtrack is set to be released in Spring 2025. A tour for this new album, Music from Macbeth, will take place in the UK soon afterwards. Music aside, Gaelynn Lea is a sought-after public speaker about accessibility in the arts. She has been featured on PBS NewsHour, On Being with Krista Tippett, The Moth Radio Hour, The Science of Happiness Podcast, and via two widely-viewed TEDx Talks.

Visit Gaelynn Lea’s website

Ashley Shew

Ashley Shew (Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech) is a philosopher of technology with work in animal studies, disability studies, biotech-ethics, and emerging technologies. She is PI on a new Mellon Foundation-funded project called Just Dis Tech (2023-2025), which engages disability arts and culture to promote humanistic reflection to better honor disabled expertise, especially in the context of science and technology.

Read more about Ashley Shew

Luke Kudryashov

Luke Kudryashov is the senior digital accessibility analyst at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Disability Resource Center. He has a background in digital accessibility, user experience, disability studies, and disability culture. Passionate about the intersection of user experience research and design, library science, and digital accessibility, he approaches accessibility holistically, integrating technical accessibility with an understanding of disability culture and community. He loves deeply listening to and observing people’s experiences to learn how to make technology better fit their needs.

Read Luke Kudryashov‘s Master’s Thesis

Alt-Text Music Notation Working Group

Research conducted as part of the Disability Community Technology Center. If you are interested in joining the working group, contact Elizabeth McLain at emclain [at] vt.edu.

Open the Gates Gaming

Open the Gates Gaming  is a research collective at Virginia Tech that focuses on inclusion and access broadly construed in tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). Play is a human right, and Open the Gates Gaming (OtG) empowers everyone to tell their stories through the medium of TTRPGs. They develop open-access tools so everyone can play together without altering the rules of the game, adding flexibility to make systems like Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition more accessible. The adventures they write represent creative arts-based research on opera that does not merely witness or reenact one author’s story, but instead allows players to inhabit the operas, wrestle with exclusionary narratives, and craft their own hero’s journey.

Know more about Open the Gates Gaming

Andrew Dell’Antonio

Andrew Dell’Antonio (he/him/his) specializes in musical repertories of early modern Europe, with a focus on seventeenth-century Italy. His research interests include musical historiography, reception history, and disability studies. Partly spurred by his personal experience of neurodivergence, he has recently turned his focus to Universal Design for Learning and related critical approaches to anti-racism, anti-ableism, and intersectional equity / inclusion in higher education music pedagogy. The academic page also includes a video presentation with closed captions.

Visit Andrew Dell’Antonio’s academic page

Visit Andrew Dell’Antonio’s personal website

Listen to Andrew Dell’Antonio’s interview on “ArtsAbly in Conversation”

Amy Sequenzia

Amy Sequenzia is an American poet, writer, disability rights, civil rights, and human rights activist, with multiple disabilities and nonverbal autism. She also has epilepsy, cerebral palsy, dyspraxia, and insomnia. Sequenzia is the co-editor of Typed Words, Loud Voices, a book on augmentative and alternative communication. She is a frequent contributor to the Autism Women’s Network and Ollibean.com. She is also a board member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and the Florida Alliance for Assistive Services and Technology.

Read the interview of Amy Sequenzia on Huffpost

Disability Culture at the University of Michigan (DC@U-M)

A cross-disability group is dedicated to bringing disabled community together. They foster friendships, coordinate events, and work toward the establishment of a Disability Cultural Center at the University of Michigan.

Learn more about DC@U-M

Disability Alliance & Caucus

The Disability Alliance at VT is a Registered Student Organization which works alongside a Faculty/Staff Disability Caucus. This is a space for disabled Virginia Tech community members and their allies to come together and engage in community building, mutual support, and disability activism. They lift the slogan of “Nothing About Us Without Us” from disability rights history. They want disabled voices to be heard and represented on campus. They hope to address cultural prejudices and dismantle systemic barriers to full participation in university life.

Learn more about Disability Alliance & Caucus