Can Anyone Be a Storyteller? Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Cultural Heritage
March 2021
"Cultural heritage institutions participate in systemic oppression beyond the simple fact that they were made to do so, but also because efforts to reorganize and restructure institutions forget that the work to be anti-oppressive is constant. No amount of finite restructuring will eliminate the existence nor the pervasiveness of racism, ableism, ageism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia, queer-phobia, prejudice, identity-based discrimination, and any other form of oppression. While this is true, it is our duty as maintainers of storytelling to fight for a decolonization of our institutions."
Written in response to an interview with Kevin Whiteneir, as part of the University of Maryland iSchool course, “Achieving Organizational Excellence,” taught by Trevor Owens. The complete book of class essays, Collaboration, Empathy, & Change: Perspectives on Leadership in Libraries and Archives in 2020, was compiled and made freely available through SocArXiv, an open archive of the social sciences.
You can read the essay and the book in full here.
Calling for Social Justice in the CF Community
August 2020
“It’s important to consider how the CF community overlooks marginalized identities within the community. Affinity groups built from a shared diagnosis or health status (such as the CF community is) can be extremely dangerous when there is not an intersectional approach to identity. Intersectionality, the framework of identity that sees each individual as the intersection of their identities rather than siphoning each off into separate boxes, is key to recognizing the complexity of discrimination throughout all aspects of life. Without intersectionality, disease-based affinity groups run the risk of policing what qualifies someone as healthy or ill enough to be part of the group.”
Written for the Summer 2020 CF Roundtable newsletter, part of the US Adult Cystic Fibrosis Association (USACFA.) CF Roundtable and USACFA are operated entirely by adult volunteers with cystic fibrosis (CF) and provide diverse information for CF adults.
Revealing Data:
Learning About Zika
June 2020
“Brazil’s epidemic gave researchers a unique opportunity to collect data and better understand Zika transmission, which would eventually lead to larger public health discussions on how to protect Brazil’s vulnerable populations—pregnant mothers and their children.
…
Since 2016, Zika has largely retreated from the U.S. and many other countries, while equatorial areas like the north of Brazil continue to grapple with the disease. Data-driven research yields information and insights that will hopefully lead to a successful containment strategy and make Zika a concern of the past everywhere.”
Co-written with Erika Mills, outreach coordinator for the Exhibition Program in the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine (NLM). Published on the NLM History of Medicine Division’s blog, Circulating Now.
You can read the article in full here.
I’m Still Learning How to Talk about My CF With My Mom
March 2020
“Recently, my mom and I were sitting on the couch talking while drinking tea. I think I was feeling sad because I remember my head on her shoulder or chest, and she was sort of holding me. I had an emotional therapy session that day in which I had told my therapist that as a kid I felt responsible for my mother's emotions. That every time she was sad, I was sad because I felt like I was the one who was supposed to make her happy. We were silent and then my mother said, ‘Sometimes I'm so scared … that you're just going to get really, really sick.’”
Published for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Community Blog.
You can read the article in full here.
Data Science In Politics of Yellow FEver
(in two parts)
June 2019
“The overarching concepts of data science are not new—examples abound in history of researchers sharing, analyzing, and processing knowledge, information, and data. The ways these processes are undertaken have shifted, as have the priorities informing those actions, and the language used to describe them. One helpful distinction is the difference between data and information. Data means the facts and figures gathered in research, which alone and without context are relatively useless. But when data is processed and analyzed it becomes actionable information. Items in this exhibition, therefore, are not merely examples of data or data sets; each item represents a piece of information developed from data by early American physicians, epidemiologists, authors, and others.”
Co-written with colleagues from the the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine (NLM): Sarah Eilers, Laura Hartman, and Erika Mills. Published on the NLM History of Medicine Division’s blog, Circulating Now.
You can read this two part series in full:
Read Part One and Read Part Two.
Learning Empathy and Self-Advocacy by Teaching Communication to Medical Professionals
June 2019
“The CF clinic, or any doctor's office, should be a safe environment for you to address all your concerns, big and small; but sometimes the burden is on us to make room for that to happen by making the first step.
…
By constantly feeling other or different, I entered the clinic with the assumption that I wouldn't be accepted or considered a CF patient of priority. I thought that a few bad experiences of providers incorrectly making assumptions about my sexuality, my race, or knowledge of pertinent medical information would carry over into all my appointments.”
Published for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Community Blog.
You can read the article in full here.
Chronic Illness and Tactile Performance:
An Interview with Tannaz Motevalli
January 2019
“I was making work that didn’t really engage with my physical body, or erased it in some way. I think I realized later on how much that was related to my chronic illness. That’s when I finally decided to make a piece a couple years ago about my cystic fibrosis, and how it affects my relationship to performance. When you feel like you have no control over your body, you feel like you want to find ways to negate it in some capacity. So a lot of my work was really anti-touch and anti-body.
After I did this piece about my illness, ‘3 Months and 28 Days,’ the work I was starting to make really paired with the way in which I was starting to focus more on myself and taking care of my body. I started exercising, for example, and became very conscious of the fact that just because I’m ill it doesn’t mean my body can’t do things. I wanted to start pushing those limits because I had never tried that before, and through doing this I realized that I really love moving in a way that is unexpected for my body. I began to start recognizing ways that I could move that were extraordinary or exciting in some way.”
Interviewed by Celia Wickham for Berlin Art Link, an online magazine for contemporary art.
You can read the interview in full here.
Sever and Suture: On the History and Future of Anatomical Dissection
September 2018
“I’m attempting to grapple with the loss. Loss of information, loss of intention, loss of subject, loss of story. The death of a beautiful thing is…complicated. It leaves me riddled with holes. It never belonged to me but I ache to know to whom. I feel detached and unsure of how to continue. I feel unstable, wounds left open in the hopes that air and time have the power to suture the space between knowing and not knowing
…
The historical use of unconsented cadavers for medical exploration is fraught with the consistent disregard and objectification of what we consider to be sacred – human life and the body which contains it. I return to my original questions, does medicine grieve the people once housed by the bodies it dissects? Is there space for negotiation? Who will suture the cuts, mend the holes? Who will preserve the dignity of the dead?”
Published for the International Museum of Surgical Science Museum Blog while working as the institutional archives and library intern.
You can read this three part series in full:
Read Part One, Read Part Two, and Read Part Three.
A Note from the Archive: Stories of and from “the Help”
May 2018
“As one of the International Museum of Surgical Science’s Collection Interns, I have been working specifically in archiving documents pertaining to the house history and early College history. I’ve been able to get fascinating glimpses of what this historic mansion once held, from the time it was the home of the Countiss family to the first formative years of the Museum’s establishment. Two of the most intriguing accounts I’ve come across were written by Henrietta Countiss Vietta and Frank Isherwood.”
Published for the International Museum of Surgical Science Museum Blog while working as the institutional archives and library intern.
You can read this article in full here.
A Seed Amongst Flesh…(I)
April 2018
“Tannaz: You are in every speck of red I see. In every scab I pick. In every bruise that heals. You are in everything that stops me in my tracks and transforms my day. You are the thing I fixate on when on the train and feeling nauseous. You are the feeling in my stomach as I fall. You are in every moment that is inexplicably calm and frightening all at once. You are in every song I’ve ever sung.
Violet: I am water.
Tannaz: You are a perfect red tomato, left on the sidewalk.
I’m in love with the world even if it is not in love with me.
Violet: I am water."
Script was co-written with Violet Eckles-Jordan and co-performed at Obst in Chicago, IL as part of a reading event, Mouth as is a kiln.
You can read the script in full here.
In Search of Gods
May 2017
"I am not a virgin because I’m a prude, I’m just waiting to be entered by something like God. I’m selfish, dedicated to myself...sometimes I’m in love with myself, and for now my hand is my God entering me." p. 21
Abstract: This paper seeks to explore the relationships between science, technology, faith, and pleasure through investigating examples of self-willed and self-actualizing reproduction. The specific examples explored are the Immaculate Conception and virgin birth of the Virgin Mary, virgin birth in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopic novel Herland, contemporary discourse around the artificial womb, and Pinar Yoldas’ Speculative Biologies. By exploring these alternative forms of reproduction, certain claims about human nature’s innate desire to (pro)create are made. Using personal narrative throughout, I attempt to argue that the ability to reproduce and the act of reproduction, in both a figurative and literal sense, are also experiences of self actualization towards better self-knowing/being-within-one’s-self.'
In Search of Gods was written as an Undergraduate Thesis in the Visual and Critical Studies Department of the School for the Art Institute of Chicago.
You can read this thesis in full here.
Close Enough
March 2016
"The circumstance:
Two sets of eyes morphing into one, I am now sitting, watching the synchronicity build as the two learn to dart around, observing everything together – complete vision. I believe these are our eyes, but I’m not sure, they are not very familiar."
Co-written with Violet Eckles-Jordan over the course of a couple of months and later read during a performance at Comfort Station in Chicago, IL, part of Homonyms curated by Her Environment.
You can read this script in full here.
FANTASIES ARE WILD AND RECKLESS THINGS AND I OFTEN LOSE CONTROL
November 2016
"Last night I dreamt a parasite had entered my body through my belly button. The pain of its entrance was sharp, but quick. I felt it roam around my insides, it’s little tail laying eggs as it travelled. The little eggs hatched and multiplied inside me. It was warm, like this...Do you feel it??"
Script co-written and co-performed with Violet Eckles-Jordan during the New Blood XI Festival at Links Hall in Chicago, IL.
You can read this script in full here.