The Department of English is The Department of English is proud to congratulate Sabrina Durso for winning third place in Humanities research at the 39^th annual Edward F. Hayes Advanced Research Forum on February 28, 2025! The Hayes Forum showcases research from Ohio State graduate students and postdoctoral scholars across all disciplines and recognizes the top-judged research presentations from each one.  

Durso’s research, “Drawing Crip Time in Relationality: The Experiences of Vision Loss in Dancing After TEN and The Impending Blindness of Billie Scott,” highlights the importance of analyzing the visual medium of comic studies alongside a disability studies perspective to understand the spectrum of experiences that disabilities such as vision loss provide. Additionally, as the public continues to fear becoming a part of the disability community, this work hopes to enlighten its audience on the isolation, anxieties, as well as the beauty and community that vision loss brings, broaching an important relationality between the sighted and those less sighted. Durso’s presentation is a part of a larger research project with fellow graduate student Ren Chivington. 

Durso is an English PhD student specializing in Disability Studies and Medical Humanities. Her research focuses on disabled communities in literature, focusing on exposing the false representations and stereotypes. She has presented her work at the Midwest Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters Conference at Alma College, and twice at the Graduate Student Conference at Oakland University. She currently serves as the president of Ohio State’s Council of Graduate Students.

This was Durso’s second time presenting at the Hayes Forum, winning an honorable mention in 2023 for her research on José Saramago’s novel Blindness. She continues a multi-year streak of English graduate students placing at the forum, beginning with Sean Yeager in 2020 and continuing with D'Arcee Neal in 2021; Keira Hambrick in 2022; Morgan Podraza, Sabrina Durso and Christoffer Turpin in 2023; and Ren Chivington in 2024.  

Durso reflects, “It was incredible to hear about the research happening within the humanities at large and to make connections across fields.” She encourages her fellow graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to participate in the Hayes Forum, saying “if you’re up for a challenge and the chance to win prize money, I encourage any English grad to continue our now 6-year win streak as a department at next year’s Hayes!”