Cripples Idiots Lepers and Freaks: Extraordinary Bodies / Extraordinary Minds
Sun, Apr 22, 2012
9:00 AM–6:00 PM
Could disability be, as Susan Wendell writes, “valued for itself, or for the different knowledge, perspective, and experience of life” it gives rise to? This conference seeks to continue—and to expand—conversations about the cultural meanings and possibilities of impairment, as well as the ways that the disabled body becomes a locus for uneasy collaborations and tensions between the social and the scientific. What critical and theoretical perspectives can be brought to bear on human variations that are, or have been, subject to medical authority or understood as requiring intervention?
On March 23rd, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University) will give the keynote address, ‘Why Disability? or, Who Should and Should Not Inhabit the World?’ Against the eugenic commonplace that assumes that the world would be a better place if disability could be eliminated, Professor Garland-Thomson will consider why, from an array of philosophical perspectives, disability is something we might want to conserve. Jasbir Puar (Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers Univeristy) will serve as respondent.
For a full program and to register, visit http://esaconference2012.wordpress.com
Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in English
