DISABLED EROTICS

THIS COURSE IS BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND.

Disabled Erotics examines the tension between BDSM and kink as liberatory practices and their enmeshment within the prison and medical industrial complexes. This class will explore histories of key figures in kink scenes such as Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose, Audre Lorde, and Sheila Courser, read sections of Alice Wong's new Disability Intimacy, and engage with Amber Jamilla Musser's book Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism, specifically the chapter on Bob Flanagan and Audre Lorde. Students will create week-long pain journals inspired by Flanagan's 1995 text Pain Journals and engage with Audre Lorde's Uses of the Erotic through a creative project highlighting sensation other than sight. Through this class, students will think complexly about touch, intimacy, eroticism, kink, and BDSM in ways that combine the political and the personal.
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This class will be held online on Zoom.
THIS CLASS IS AVAILABLE ONLINE ON ZOOM.

TUESDAYS 6-8 PM
OCTOBER 14 - November 4 , 2025
4 sessions +
culminating share out on Wednesday, Nov 12th
Sliding scale tuition: 
$45, $120, $220, ​or $320
+ $30 non-refundable registration fee

INSTRUCTORS

Mae Howard’s interdisciplinary approach extends across research-based, participatory, and collaborative projects. Calling upon lineages of disabled labor economies, Mae is interested in the embodied, fleshly, and material enmeshment of BDSM, the medical industrial complex, leather histories, biopolitics, and debilitation. Howard received an MFA and Certificate in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies from The University of Pennsylvania. They are an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program and have recently completed residencies at BricLab (Brooklyn, NY), ACRE (Steuben, WI), Picture Berlin (Berlin, DE), Activation Residency (Woodridge, NY), Pocoapoco (Oaxaca, MX), BAX Arts (Brooklyn, NY). Their work has been screened and exhibited extensively across the United States and around the world.  www.maehoward.com

June Kramer is an organizer, leatherdyke, stutterer, and abolitionist.
Image credit:  Crip Gimp, by Mae Howard
This program is supported through a Cultural Development Fund grant from the New York Department of Cultural Affairs.
Our classes are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.