Shortlist, 2026 Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize, given by the British Sociological Association

A chronicle of ableism and disability activism in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic

How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic documents the pivotal experiences of disabled people living in an early epicenter of COVID-19: New York City. Among those hardest hit by the pandemic, disability communities across the five boroughs have been disproportionately impacted by city and national policies, work and housing conditions, stigma, racism, and violence―as much as by the virus itself. Disabled and chronically-ill activists have protested plans for medical rationing and refuted the eugenic logic of mainstream politicians and journalists who “reassure” audiences that only older people and those with disabilities continue to die from COVID-19. At the same time, as exemplified by the viral hashtag #DisabledPeopleToldYou, disability expertise has become widely recognized in practices such as accessible remote work and education, quarantine, and distributed networks of support and mutual aid. This edited volume charts the legacies of this “mass disabling event” for uncertain viral futures, exploring the dialectic between disproportionate risk and the creativity of a disability justice response.

How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic includes contributions by wide-ranging disability scholars, writers, and activists whose research and lived experiences chronicle the pandemic’s impacts in prisons, migrant detention centers, Chinatown senior centers, hospitals in Queens and the Bronx, subways, schools, housing shelters, social media, and other locations of public and private life. By focusing on New York City over the course of three years, the book reveals key themes of the pandemic, including hierarchies of disability "vulnerability," the deployment of disability as a tool of population management, and innovative crip pandemic cultural production. How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic honors those lost, as well as those who survived, by calling for just policies and caring infrastructures, not only in times of crisis but for the long haul.

About the Authors

Mara Mills is Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Mills is cofounder of the NYU Center for Disability Studies and coeditor of Crip Authorship: Disability as Method.

Harris Kornstein is Assistant Professor of Public and Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona. They have published research and essays in Surveillance & Society, Curriculum Inquiry, Wired, and others.

Faye Ginsburg is David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology, New York University. Among other works she is the author of Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community and coeditor of Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction.

Rayna Rapp is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, and the author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America and coauthor of Disability Worlds.

Judith Heumann (1947-2023) was an internationally recognized disability rights activist, widely regarded as one of the leaders of the Disability Rights Movement. Judy worked in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, as an advisor at the World Bank, and as a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation. Her story is featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020) and her book, Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist (2020). She continued to be active until her death at age 75 on March 5, 2023. See https://judithheumann.com/

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