Circle: A round shape with no corners or sides. With this issue’s focus on CONFIDING, it’s a favoured shape used by collaborators to meet and relate—consider opening circles or sharing circles as common forms of getting together (see Beeds and Christie-Peters). With their form implying evenness and equality, circles are used in many forms of collaboration to model non-hierarchical working methods (see also Post-Film Collective; Smith; mother tongues).
Confidence: Being assured and trusting, or trustworthy. Like the title of this issue, CONFIDING, confidence is a trait forged among individuals and groups, requiring maintenance and renewal (see also trust; risk). It might be expressed interpersonally as a set of social cues (see Vidrin, which highlights the cultural specificity of actions and gestures), or across a community as a shared sentiment (see López, on restoring confidence through public art practice). At a larger scale, confidence is quantified to underpin market transactions and probability models (Cochrane, SDUK01).
Dramaturgy is the study of composition and representation of drama on the theatrical stage; can also refer to the practice of adapting a text for the stage. Usually distinct from playwriting, dramaturgy encompasses all the onstage elements that make up a play, including script, choreography, and scenography. Departing from conventional theatre production, Jess Watkin outlines how disability dramaturgy further broadens the bounds of theatre, considering how care practices can be extended “onstage, backstage, and in the audience.”
Dream: A series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur in the mind. Whether asleep or awake, dreaming can be conceived as a way of pushing the boundaries of feeling, thinking, and being. Dreaming is an important practice across many social, cultural, spiritual, and political contexts (see for instance Beeds, SDUK11); and it often serves as a vision to spur action. For SDUK contributors, dreams demonstrate the power of the imagination to transform and liberate (Watkin; López; Kelley, SDUK14).
Intimacy: A description for close connection; or a euphemism for sex. Can be experienced in private or public, as described by López, who asked participants to share and visualize problems faced by their community. For Vidrin, intimacy is fostered on the stage and in social interactions through mutual respect, transcending cultural and linguistic boundaries. See SDUK06 for a definition of intimacy as a way of being grounded in meaningful exchanges (Ricco); or McArthur and Zavitsanos in Take Care whose exchange considers intimacy in disability care.
Kino is a prefix usually appended to allude to cinema or filmmaking, which derives from the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture viewing device. The Greek words kineto (“movement”) and scopos (“viewing”) gave this device its name, which has since been abridged to kino, and expanded to include cinema of all kinds. The Post-Film Collective refers to “kino-eyes” as a way of viewing the world through cinema; for them, the kino-eye metaphorizes collaboration in filmmaking, where single and multiple viewpoints must converge to create a whole, or diverge to create fragmented perspectives.
Used to convey rumination on a topic, meditation commonly refers to exercise(s) to attain mental clarity and a state of calm. Guided or self-directed, alone or in groups (see Smith), meditation may comprise one or more techniques, including: breathwork, stillness, silence, or repetition. Part of a long cultural history particularly rooted in Buddhism and Hinduism, meditation has spread from its spiritual roots to many everyday uses often untethered from its origins, such as app-driven mindfulness or as a corporate tool. As an oral history methodology, Stranges offers guided meditation as a tool for participants to access memories (see also somatic). Meditation or mindfulness scores are shared across the SDUK, including Crawley in 13, and Su-Feh in 11.
Morality: A set of beliefs about how individuals in a society should behave, typically rooted in notions of right and wrong. Morals might be firm or malleable, unstated or codified, but their implementation affects legal and carceral systems, as well as everyday norms. In the past and present, morals shape public reactions to norms of gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability. In the Global North, the dominant forms of morality are deeply tied to Christianity and Enlightenment-era belief systems, which are reflected in law and policy. This issue shares responsive and alternative bases for morality, such as those developed from performing arts (Vidrin) or Indonesian oral traditions (Performance RAR).
Myth: A narrative that suggests or explains a cultural concept, such as an origin story, spiritual belief, or natural phenomenon. SDUK contributors discuss myths as methods of individual or collective world building; developing and strengthening kinship (see Post-Film Collective); preserving and revitalizing language, rituals, and traditions (see Chiang, SDUK08); and protecting all life and our ecologies (see Performance RAR). It can also mean a widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief (Cochrane, SDUK02; Emmelhainz, SDUK09); in some cases, charges of “myth” have been used to deride or delegitimate cultural beliefs.
Negotiation: Conferring with others to come to an agreement or resolution, often involving a difference in opinion. Its Latin etymology gives the meaning “to carry on business”; it also suggests navigating interpersonal conflict, or in Jess Watkin’s case, the non-negotiable terms over losing her eyesight. On negotiating as an embodied practice, see Vidrin whose choreography invites dancers to respond to their partners’ movements, and theodor who reframes sharing a meal as an experience of negotiation.
Reservoir: A large body of water, often caused by human intervention such as damming (see hydroelectric power). Dams often pose social, public health, and environmental issues: disruption of animal migration, natural habitat loss, creation of breeding grounds for disease vectors, as well as resettlement and community displacement (see Performance RAR; Take Care; Robertson, SDUK04). See Chuang, SDUK13 on the parallels between damming and the creation of the Indian Reserve system as spaces characterized by barriers, restrictions, and enforcement.
From Greek meaning "of the body," somatic describes practices that support self-reflection and healing through embodiment. Working from therapeutic or educational frameworks, somatic practitioners often use movement-based techniques, including breath, dance, or exercises that foster mind-body connection (see Smith; meditation; bodymind). While Brown and Stranges employ somatic attunement techniques, Vidrin’s partnering studies ask dancers to explore their somatic boundaries. See also Doty in SDUK12 who foregrounds decolonization and gender-diversity in somatic sex education.
Tactility: the physical and sensorial response to stimuli, which turns external forces into sensations. Originating at the surface of the body and not necessarily visible from the outside (see Vidrin), tactile encounters can also evoke emotional responses, such as empathy from a warm embrace (see also intimacy; somatic). For Jess Watkin, artworks made available to touch are a tenet of disability-minded art practice (see also Neurocultures Collective, SDUK09, on tactility in filmmaking).
Translation shifts words or text from one language to another. Often combining linguistic expertise, interpretation, and creativity, translation is an expansive field of study and practice (see mother tongues). Translators navigate each language in use with the author’s voice(s), style, and intentions, anticipated reader(s), and broader context. Throughout the SDUK, translation resurfaces as an important bridge for communicating interculturally, as when texts have been offered in two languages (López; Sylliboy; Oyola-Santiago, SDUK14); or when non-translatable words have been included, with approximated definitions (see Aabawe; Matria; Nibi; Ode).
Wi’temsaiw is the Mi’kmaq text (Eskasoni dialect, Smith-Francis orthography) for “you say to yourself.” Used in Sylliboy’s poetry, alongside Mi’kmaq hieroglyphs, to describe the interrelation of self, world, and creation.