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Faculty Members Collaborate for Special Performance During National Disabilities Awareness Month

March 18, 2025 in Campus News

Meadow Bridgham and Liz Whiteacre

Adjunct instructor of music Meadow Bridgham and associate professor of English Liz Whiteacre collaborated for a special Faculty Artist Concert Series event on March 17 for a performance entitled “Garden Songs.” It’s a program that explores how music and poetry can be used as vessels for healing—a particularly important idea considering that March is National Disabilities Awareness Month. 

Music was composed by Bridgham with spoken word poetry and lyrics written by Whiteacre. Bridgham is genderqueer, has temporal lobe epilepsy and is autistic.

Meadow Bridgham and Andrew Durham
Meadow Bridgham (left) and Andrew Durham performed in the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center on March 17.

The partnership between the two began in 2021 when Bridgham was finishing their Doctorate of Musical Arts at Yale University and asked Whiteacre to write a series of poems based on Bridgham’s experiences with temporal lobe epilepsy or TLE. The result was “Seasons of Seizing: six poems on temporal lobe epilepsy,” which Bridgham set to music.

Whiteacre has since written an additional ten poems from the perspective of someone with TLE, based on interviews with Bridgham as well as other research. Bridgham said whether read as poetry or sung as music, the content is as much about TLE as it is about Bridgham as a person.

“We save our democracy through visible, sincere artistic expressions of the self,” said Bridgham. “I hope our concert is a beacon to the many genderqueer, autistic and disabled musicians and students at the University of Indianapolis.”

Monday’s concert was a mixture of piano music, poetry readings and song, utilizing the voice of Andrew Durham who teaches voice at Georgetown College, directs the choir at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and performs regularly with the Cincinnati Vocal Arts Ensemble.

Whiteacre’s poetry—which also draws on her own issues with chronic pain related to spinal issues—has been turned into a chapbook entitled “it could account for the panic” which is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press later this month. To order a copy, visit her link on the Finishing Line Press website.