From Frida Kahlo’s prosthetic leg to Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair, this talk discusses “crip objects” and their design, engaging with ideas of making and difference in the world.

Elizabeth Guffey is Professor of Art and Design History at the State University of New York, Purchase College. She is the author of Retro: The Culture of Revival (Reaktion, 2006) and Posters: A Global History (Reaktion, 2015). She is also co-editor of Making Disability Modern (with Bess Williamson, Bloomsbury, 2020), After Universal Design (Bloomsbury 2023) and author of Designing Disability (Bloomsbury, 2018) . She is also the Founding Editor of the peer-review journal Design and Culture (Routledge). Her scholarly work has appeared in a variety of venues, including Design and Culture, Design Issues, and the Journal of Visual Culture. As part of her efforts to bring design and disability studies to broad publics, she has also authored essays in a number of range of publications, including The New York Times and The Nation. Professor Guffey is currently completing a book on the conflation of disability, late 19th century art and material culture.