ART + MEDICINE: DISABILITY, CULTURE and CREATIVITY FILM & PANEL DISCUSSION

The Cedar Access Committee Presents a Free Film Screening:

Sunday, September 21, 2025 / Doors: 4:00 PM / Show: 4:30 PM

All Ages

Seated

Free

This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request access accommodations, please go to our

ABOUT THIS SHOW

Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) Documentary Film Screening of Art + Medicine: Disability, Culture and Creativity followed by a Post-Show Panel Discussion with Jessica Horvath Williams, PhD, Kevin Kling and Elizabeth McLain, PhD.

Artists and healthcare clinicians create alternative perspectives on disability, through disability, stories and performances, and redefine what we perceive as normal. Hosted by artist and storyteller Kevin Kling, Professor Jessica Horvath Williams, PhD, and internal medicine physician Tseganesh Selameab. This program was produced by Twin Cities PBS in collaboration with the Center for the Art of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School and funded by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Post-Documentary Film Screening Panel Discussion:

A panel of professionals talking about accessibility and audience Q&A: Jessica Horvath Williams, PhD: Assistant Professor in English at the University of Minnesota; Kevin Kling: Writer, Actor, Storyteller; Elizabeth McLain: Assistant Professor of Musicology and Director of Disability Studies at Virginia Tech.

Panel discussion moderated by Paul Creager: Square Lake Festival & Civic Engaged Storyteller.

Jessica Horvath Williams is a black, queer, neurodiverse, chronically ill Assistant Professor in English at the University of Minnesota. She teaches and researches, on one hand, at the crossroads of 19th-century U.S literature and critical disability studies, and on the other, at the intersection of neurodiversity, theory, and social justice. Her current work revises the history of ableism, tracing many of its ideologies to ideal womanhood, proto-eugenics, and unwaged labor. Nationally, she serves as Board Vice-President for the Autistic Women & Non-Binary Network.

To learn more about Jessica Horvath Williams:

• Visit her website here

Kevin Kling is a writer/actor/storyteller from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a graduate of Osseo High School, Gustavus Adolphus College and received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Carleton College. He has performed his shows in libraries, school gymnasiums, regional theaters, two Off-Broadway productions, and storytelling festivals and international tours including Australia, Europe, and Thailand. He has been a commentator for National Public Radio's “All Things Considered, is a frequent contributor on PBS/TPT's "Almanac" and was featured in the Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary "Kevin Kling: Lost & Found". Mayor RT Rybak named Kevin the Minneapolis Story Laureate in 2014. Kevin teamed with Sod House Theater, the College of Ph*rm*cy, Orphan Drug Research and the Department of Rare Disease at the University of Minnesota to create the theater piece titled “RARE: Stories of Dis-ease” in 2022.

He has performed with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, the Zeitgeist ensemble and with composer Victor Zupanc.

Awards include the Whiting Award, NEA, McKnight, Bush Fellowship, Jerome, Minnesota State Arts Board, the A.P. Anderson Award, the VSA Jeahny, and the AATE, Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award.

Kevin has worked as a teacher, playwright and performer with Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, a company that creates art in the spirit of radical inclusion. He is very proud to be part of the first Arts and Medicine production, “Hippocrates Cafe: Reflections on a Pandemic”.

Kevin has authored five books and produced seven CDs.

To learn more about Kevin Kling:

• Visit his website here

Elizabeth McLain is Assistant Professor of Musicology and Director of Disability Studies at Virginia Tech. She completed her Ph.D. and M.A. in Musicology at the University of Michigan. A proud Hokie, McLain earned a B.A. in Music and a B.A. in History at Virginia Tech.

As a transdisciplinary scholar, McLain has two research areas. Her work on music and spirituality since 1870 confronts assumptions about secularization by deciphering the spiritual and religious references in modernist and postmodernist musical compositions. Devout, skeptical, mystical, or manipulative, a composer’s spiritual journey remains relevant to understanding their works. Her doctoral dissertation was supported by a Lurcy Fellowship; in “The Apolitical as Political: Olivier Messiaen’s Theology, Intellectual World, and Aesthetic Agenda in the 1930s” she argues Messiaen’s ressourcement theology led him to both the Nonconformist politics of Emmanuel Mounier and a Surrealist aesthetic language sanctified by the Catholic poetics of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain. Her recent publications include chapters in and Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire as well as an for the Journal of Musicological Research.

McLain’s lived experience as a chronically ill cane-wielding autistic compels her to transform music scholarship through the principles of disability justice. She serves as co-chair of the Music and Disability Study Group of the American Musicological Society and is a professional member of RAMPD: Recording Artists and Music Professionals with Disabilities. By connecting disabled-run advocacy organizations, McLain combats ableism in academia with communities of care. Her research on disability culture and the arts has an (auto)ethnographic bent, capturing an insider’s perspective on the creative lives of disabled artists. With the support of an ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant, her team is documenting the inaugural CripTech incubator with an emphasis on ethical consent processes and access. Her current book project is Krip Time: the Rhythm of Disabled Music, Life, and Activism.

To learn more about Elizabeth McLain:

• Visit her website here

Paul Creager

Paul Creager is a devotee to the power of cinema, and promotes the medium as an Filmmaker, Educator/Fulbright Scholar (Civic Engaged Storytelling, Curriculum Coordinator Gordon Parks High School '08-'24) and Film Event Organizer (Square Lake Film & Music Festival, Marine Documentary Series).

Square Lake Festival & Civic Engaged Storyteller.

To learn more about Square Lake Festival:

Visit website here

Thank You to Twin Cities PBS in collaboration with the Center for the Art of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School and funded by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota, Professor Jessica Horvath Williams,PhD,  Writer/Actor/Storyteller Kevin Kling, Professor Elizabeth McLain, PhD, Paul Creager, Members of The Cedar's Access Committee, and General Operating Support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the McKnight Foundation.

Host or Publisher The Cedar Cultural Center