David Adelman

David Adelman (he/him/his) is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Digital Accessible Futures lab at the University of Michigan.  His research interests center disability and crip studies, with a particular emphasis on disability media studies, digital disability cultures, disability film studies, and critical sexuality studies. Through an interdisciplinary crip studies/feminist lens, he pursues questions which emerge at the intersection of power, culture, technology, identity, and desire. His recent dissertation, “Ambivalent Pleasures: Pleasure, Desire, Authenticity, and the Production of Value in Online Disability Cultures,” examines how discourses of “desirable disability” manifest in cultural productions and Internet publics. This project traces the circulation and intensification of such discourse in popular culture across a range of audiovisual material, exploring the neoliberal commodification of identity politics that occurs and, concomitantly, is contested, online. He also maintains an artistic practice which centers experimental video and remix as a means to explore disability culture, aesthetics, and politics.