CFP: Alternative Psychiatric Narratives Conference (May 2014, UK)

Call for Papers: Alternative Psychiatric Narratives

When: Friday 16th + Saturday 17th May 2014

Where: Birkbeck College, University of London

Chair: Professor Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck

In recent years, historians of psychiatry have heeded Roy Porter’s call to produce psychiatric histories from the patient’s point of view. Studies have moved on from focusing on medical discourse to investigating the diversity of the patient population, their varied experiences, and their pathways to and from psychiatric institutions. Only just beginning, however, is work which pays attention to alternative narratives of psychiatry: individuals and accounts that have been excluded or overlooked in the midst of this focus upon doctor and patient. These include the experiences of those located outside formal psychiatric spaces and relationships, from families and non-medical staff, to activists and campaigners, as well as narratives taking unconventional forms or found in unexpected places, offering alternative readings of sites, spaces, or texts, or challenging the very ways in which psychiatric narratives could or should be expressed and used.

This conference seeks to contribute to the development of these alternative narratives of psychiatry (in the broadest sense of the term) by exploring the voices and experiences of those involved in the non-institutional, non-formal aspects of psychiatry, and by investigating new ways to access all aspects of psychiatric experience, from the early modern period to today. This will be a space to discuss wide ranging (alternative) narratives of psychiatry, representations of psychiatry over time, and the methods and meanings behind this work from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

Proposals for 20 minute papers touching on any aspects of alternative psychiatric narratives are welcomed from postgraduate and early career researchers across the humanities and social sciences.

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

• Alternative methodologies (such as oral history, social geography, ethnography, and more)
• Histories of familial and community care
• Representations of psychiatry in literature, theatre, art, music and the media
• Disability theories and histories in relation to the history of psychiatry and mental health
• Reforms, campaigns, and histories of activism and the psychiatric survivor movement
• Alternative views of traditional psychiatric sites such as asylums, hospitals, clinics
• Developments, experiences and perceptions of auxiliary and support staff
• Questions of space, time, culture and locality
• The gendering of psychiatric spaces, diagnoses and treatments
• Changing therapeutic identities over time
• Race and ethnicity, and other hidden dimensions of psychiatric history
• The classic sick role: its history, consequences and alternatives
• Medical texts and their role in shaping psychiatric stories
• The problems with psychiatric narratives: authenticity and authority, uses and abuses

Those interested in presenting a paper should email a short proposal (max. 300 words) to AltPsychiatricNarratives@gmail.com by Monday 3rd March 2014

Subject to funding, we hope that some travel expenses will be available for speakers. Members of the Society for the Social History of Medicine will be able to apply for travel bursaries from the Society; visit www.sshm.org/content/conference-bursaries-students  for more details.

Further details and information regarding registration will be at www.altpsychiatricnarratives.wordpress.com

New Publication: Special Issue on “Translating Happiness: Medicine, Culture and Social Progress”

The special issue of the journal Health, Culture and Society, “Translating Happiness: Medicine, Culture and Social Progress” has just been published and is available through open access.

The issue includes:

Editorial Introduction ~ K. Aubrecht

Encounters with Translations of Happiness ~ T. Titchkosky

The Neoliberal Circulation of Affects: Happiness, accessibility and the capacitation of disability as wheelchair ~ K. Fritsch

As If You Have a Choice: Autism mothers and the remaking of the human ~ P. N. Douglas

Alterity In/Of Happiness: Reflecting on the radical possibilities of unruly bodies ~ E. Chandler and C. Rice

A link to the issue table of contents is included below. PDFs can be downloaded by clicking on “PDF” (on the right side of the page).

http://hcs.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/hcs/issue/current/showToc

Enjoy!

 

Event: ‘Researching Disabled People’s Sexual Lives: Some Reflections’ (3rd Dec 2013: Toronto, Canada)

The New College Disability Studies Speaker Series presents…

Researching Disabled People’s Sexual Lives: Some Reflections

A Lecture by Dr. Kirsty Liddiard (Ethel Louise Armstrong Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University, Canada)

Tuesday, December 3rd 2013 (1pm-3pm)

OISE, 2nd Floor Room 2212, 252 Bloor St. West, Above St. George Subway, Toronto, Canada.

Biography: Kirsty Liddiard is currently the Ethel Louise Armstrong Postdoctoral Fellow within the School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto, where she lectures and teaches on a range of disability issues. Kirsty was awarded with a PhD in Sociology in April 2013 from the University of Warwick, UK. Her work critically explores the intersections of disability, gender, and sexuality in dis/ableist cultures.

Description of talk: In this talk, I offer a reflexive account of the processes, politics, problems, practicalities and pleasures of storying disabled people’s sexual lives for the purposes of sociological research. Drawing upon a doctoral study which explored disabled people’s lived experiences of sex, intimacy and sexuality through their own sexual stories, I consider how my identity, subjectivity and embodiment – in this case, a white, British, young, heterosexual, disabled, cisgendered woman with congenital and (dependent upon the context) visible impairment – was interwoven within and through the research methodology; most explicitly, as an interlocutor and co-constructor of informants’ sexual stories. Given the paucity of reflexive research in this area, a number of reflexive dilemmas are identified. These dilemmas make valuable methodological contributions to qualitative sociology, disability studies scholarship and research, and current knowledges of the emotional work of qualitative researchers (Dickinson-Smith et al 2009).

Event information:

• Light snacks and refreshments will be provided
• ASL interpretation is booked
• This building is wheelchair accessible
• The closest accessible subway station is St. George Subway Station, Bedford Road exit
•  Although we cannot guarantee an absolute scent free space, we ask attendees to refrain from wearing scents to this event

THIS EVENT IS FREE

For accessibility or additional information, please contact: uoftdisabilitylistserve@gmail.com

 

CFP: Knots: An Undergraduate Journal of Disability Studies

Knots: An Undergraduate Journal of Disability Studies

Call For Papers

***SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 30th, 2014***

The Equity Studies program, New College, University of Toronto, invites submissions for the inaugural edition of Knots: An Undergraduate Journal of Disability Studies. Knots is a peer-reviewed journal that will highlight high-calibre work by undergraduate students  and undergraduate alumni that moves beyond normative biomedical conceptions of disability and contributes to the development and growth of Disability Studies as a field.

The editors are open to the widest array of discussion of relevant themes and topics that contribute to Disability Studies and the continued examination and deconstruction of ableism. Submissions in the forms of essays, book and film reviews, and art pieces are welcome. Suggested themes might include, but are by no means limited to:

• intersectional analyses of sexuality/gender/class/race & disability
• crip community, activism, allyship and disability rights;
• representations, interpretations of disability in everyday life; in arts, athletics, and performance;
• disability in local and global contexts; interactions in the medical and rehabilitative communities;
• education; learning and developmental disabilities;
• physical disability; psychiatric disability; M/madness;
• eugenics; disability history; disability rights; employment;
• representations in pop culture; representation and/or expression through the arts; etc.

 

Requirements and Reviewing:  Submissions should be original and unpublished with an emphasis on completed (rather than intended) works. Essays should be 2500 words maximum, excluding bibliography; book and film reviews should be 1000 words maximum; art pieces should be accompanied by an artists’ statement not in excess of 500 words. Manuscripts should be fully and correctly cited in APA style.

Submissions will be evaluated on both significance and relevance to the field of Disability Studies as well as technical strength and clarity, and should be accompanied by a 100-word abstract. Submitted work will be subject to peer-review; successfully reviewed entries will be returned to submitters for edits before being approved for publication. Once the editing period has come to a close, we will not accept any changes to an accepted paper.

 

Submission Procedure & Information:  The submission process is electronic: all manuscript submissions can be made online to knots.contact@gmail.com  by no later than January 30th, 2013. The author/s name and the title of work both should appear in the subject line of the email; the full manuscript should be attached as a PDF file to the editors. Any questions regarding content, submission, or accessibility requests should be directed to co-editor Sarah Hoedlmoser (sarah.hoedlmoser@gmail.com).

PhD Opportunity: School of Education, Oxford Brookes University (UK)

The School of Education, Oxford Brookes University is looking for a strong candidate for one, three-year, full-time Ph.D. studentship. For the successful candidate the home/EU fee will be paid by the University and students will receive an annual stipend of £7000 for three years beginning in 2013/14. The studentship is open to both home/EU and International students, but International applicants should be aware that they would need to fund the difference between the home/EU and International research degree fees each year for the duration of the award.

The studentship is intended for candidates, who will pursue Ph.D. research that falls within the following research areas (this list is not exclusive and applications in other research areas are also welcomed):

• Learning, Identity and Culture
• Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment
• Childhood, Families and Community
• Educational Purposes, Ethics and Beliefs
• Partnership, Policy and Leadership

As a successful applicant, you will join a supportive and research-active School. In the RAE 2008, 70% research in the School was judged to be of International quality.

Eligibility: We are looking to recruit a candidate of the highest quality, with the capability of submitting a Ph.D. thesis within 3 years. The successful candidate is expected to have completed, or be in the process of completing, a relevant Masters degree. The Studentship holder may also be required to complete supplementary research methods training in their first year of study. The candidate should also be able to demonstrate strong research capabilities and be fluent in spoken and written English.

Deadline: The closing date for  applications is 17:00 on Monday 25^th November 2013

Interview date: Interviews will be held from the week commencing Monday 9^th December 2013

Start date:  January 2014

How to apply: To request an application pack and for further details of how to apply, please contact the Research Administrator, Marinka Walker:

Email: hss-researchdegrees@brookes.ac.uk

Tel: + 44 (0) 1865 48 8585  Fax: + 44 (0) 1865 48 6666

For further information, please consult our website: http://www.education.brookes.ac.uk/research/degrees/studentships

Reminder: DRF Seminar #2 – Wednesday, 27th Nov 2013: 2pm-4pm (at SHU)

The DRF Seminar Schedule 2013-2014 continues next Wednesday with Kate Macdonald reading First World War fiction for tales of impairment.  All are welcome. We are looking forward to some fascinating discussions.

Seminar #2. Wednesday, 27th November 2013: 2pm-4pm – Arundel 10212 (SHU)

Kate Macdonald (Ghent University, Belgium & Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, UK)

Reading First World War Fiction for Tales of Impairment

Abstract: This paper describes preliminary findings from my research for the CENDARI project at King’s College London, for which I’m a visiting research fellow. I’m reading fiction published during or shortly after the First World War to collect images and descriptions of the impaired body. I’m looking for the war-wounded ex-soldier and also for the man who could not serve due to physical impairment caused by congenital conditions, disease or industrial injury, because my hypothesis is that some kinds of disability were considered at this time to be more deserving than others. I will be using a cross-disciplinary approach to consider how these depictions were used, using my reading of historical assessment, disability studies theory, and literary analysis. My sources are from popular culture, since my wider project is on the depiction of the impaired body in popular culture, 1914-1939. Thus I am not looking at Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Mrs Dalloway, but at serialised magazine fiction, novels in reprint series, and advertisements. ‘Popular fiction has long been understood as having the potential to make visible the intangible nature of discursive power, cultural values – especially at moments of social transition – and emerging imaginative constructs that enable popular understandings of crisis and desire’ (Moody 2008).

Bio: Kate Macdonald teaches British literature and literary history at Ghent University, Belgium, and is a specialist in British literary history of the early twentieth century. She is the leading scholarly authority on John Buchan, and has published widely on middlebrow literary culture and book history. She is the series editor, with Ann Rea, for the Literary Texts and the Popular Marketplace monograph series for Pickering & Chatto, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London. She podcasts at www.reallylikethisbook.com, and is a member of the Vulpes Libris book blogging collective at http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/.

Venue: This seminar will be held in the Arundel Building, 122 Charles Street, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 1WB. For a map of City Campus click here.

For more info on upcoming DRF events, click here.

…and don’t forget, registration and abstract submissions are now open for Normalcy 2014.

Reminder: DRF Seminar #1 – Monday, 11th Nov 2013: 10am-12pm (at SHU)

The ‘DRF Seminar Schedule 2013-2014’ kicks off next Monday with the following line-up…

 

1. Monday, 11th November 2013: 10am-12pm – Arundel 10111 (SHU)

 

Slot 1: Ghasem Norouzi (Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran, & Visiting Research Fellow at University of Sheffield, UK): How do supported employment providers promote ‘meaningful work’ opportunities for people with learning difficulties?

This paper reports a study about ‘How do supported employment providers promote ‘meaningful work’ opportunities for people with learning difficulties?’ by providing a thematic analysis of the views and experiences of the eight supported employment providers (SEPs) in city in the North of England (Northtown). An eclectic approach, using qualitative methods (narratives inquiry, ethnography, interview, and observation) was adopted. The findings argue that ‘meaningful work’ meant more than just ‘paid employment’. It must include earning money, increasing self-esteem, self-respect, freedom, empowerment, choice on the work, enjoyment and satisfaction of people with learning difficulties with their lives. This findings show that generally, the SEPs through supported employment agencies had offered a lot of services to the employers and employees with learning difficulties. They were successful in increasing the employers’ awareness of the ability of people with learning difficulties; finding jobs and workplaces for people with learning difficulties; and supporting their employers in solving problems inside and outside of work. However, the SEPs were not successful in enabling people to gain ‘meaningful work’ in mainstream employment. The results of this study indicate various structural and individual barriers for people with learning difficulties to obtain ‘meaningful work’. Structural barriers include negative attitudes of employers, parents, carers, and service providers; inflexibility of the benefit system; unenforced legislation; difficulties in using public transport, and; a lack of long-term employment service support. The findings also revealed some major individual barriers including: unwillingness to work, a lack of confidence, having difficulty in communication with managers, colleagues and customers at work, a lack of qualifications, and limited social skills. This study suggested some ways of overcoming structural barriers including: changing the negative attitudes of employers, parents, carers and service providers towards people with learning difficulties. It also highlighted some ways of overcoming individual barriers included increasing self-confidence and providing suitable training for people with learning difficulties.

 

Slot 2: John Rees (Independent Scholar, UK): History, Memory: Eugenics and the Holocaust, Fighting the Concept of the Perfect Neo-Liberal Human being today

 

Venue: This seminar will be held in the Arundel Building, 122 Charles Street, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 1WB. For a map of City Campus click here.

For more info on upcoming DRF events, click here.

…and don’t forget, registration and abstract submissions are now open for Normalcy 2014.

Event: ‘Driving Under the Influence: Impairment Rhetoric in Social Justice Education’ ~ Tanya Titchkosky (Nov, 2013: Toronto)

The Humanities, Social Sciences & Social Justice Education (HSSSJE) Brown Bag 2013/14 Speakers Series presents…

‘Driving Under the Influence: Impairment Rhetoric in Social Justice Education’

~ Tanya Titchkosky

 

Date (Venue): Wednesday, 20th November: 12:30-1:30pm (Room 12-274, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, M5S 1V6)

Summary: Color blind, deaf to the call of justice, suffering from historical amnesia; blind to structural oppression, limping under the weight of inequality, an amputated self, crazy; subject to colonial aphasia, nothing but a deformed autonomy made to fit a crippled economy; devastatingly disabled. What compels this impairment rhetoric? Obviously, such rhetoric is steeped in able-ism and includes disability as a devalued and excludable type. Still, is there something not so obvious that we should notice here?

This talk explores social justice education’s need to drive itself forward under the influence of impairment rhetoric, so as to reveal a few of the lessons concealed in this need. These lessons touch upon the production of the nature/culture divide accomplished through disability configured as the boundary of peoples’ potential, as this relates to an unexamined conception of the human steeped in its own inhumanity. I will end this talk by showing how a non-rhetorical relation to impairment rhetoric offers an imaginative way to re-approach social justice issues.

Bio: Tanya Titchkosky is an Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Tanya’s publications include, The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning (2011); Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment (2007); Disability, Self and Society (2003) as well as a reader with co-editor Rod Michalko, Rethinking Normalcy (2009). Tanya’s current work explores disability narrative in order to reveal the interpretive edges of the meaning of human with a particular focus on human rights, immigration and education policy, epigenetic discourse, and WHO mental health projects.

Info: Please join us, all welcome. For more information please contact Cindy Sinclair, c.sinclair@utoronto.ca or visit http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/hsssje//index.html

CFP: Critical Disability Discourse / Discours Critiques Dans Le Champ Du Handicap

Critical Disability Discourse / Discours Critiques Dans Le Champ Du Handicap

** Call for Papers **

Critical Disability Discourse is a bilingual, interdisciplinary journal, publishing articles that focus on experiences of disability from a critical perspective. It was launched in November 2009 by York University’s Critical Disability Studies Graduate Student Program (www.yorku.ca/gradcdis). The journal considers articles from graduate scholars in a variety of academic fields, but undergraduate students, activists, and community members/organizers are also invited to contribute. Critical Disability Discourse’s goals are to provide emerging scholars with an opportunity to contribute to the expanding field of critical disability studies and to gain exposure for their work in the public sphere.

Next Submission deadline is March 1, 2014.

 

Possible topics can include but are not limited to the following:

• • Critical theory and disability: feminism, post-modernism, postcolonial theory, transnational analysis, Marxism, etc.
• • History of disability: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Victorian Age, Industrial Age, etc.
• • Law and public policy, and disability
• • Qualitative and quantitative research pertaining to disability
• • Education and disability
• • Culture: disability-related popular culture, television, videos, blogs, arts, literature and film analysis
• • Employment, market, workforce, and income security in relation to disability
• • Disability-related topics in social sciences: psychology, sociology, geography, political science
• • Assessment of accessibility accommodations
• • Technology and disability

 

Submission guidelines are as follows:

1. Articles must critically address a question about an aspect of disability and offer a new angle of thought and insight; they should contribute to scholarship in the field of Critical Disability Studies. Articles must involve a critical argument, rather than be only descriptive.

2. Articles must be submitted in either English or French. Authors must consent to the translation of their articles for publication.

3. In submitting a manuscript, authors affirm that the research is original and unpublished, is not in press or under consideration elsewhere, and will not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration by the journal.

4. Articles must be 3,000-7,000 words (including quotations, references, footnotes, tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations).

5. In promoting inclusion and accessibility, the journal accepts and encourages tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations within the article. However, all tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations must include detailed written descriptions.

6. An abstract of 100-150 words should summarize the main arguments and themes of the article, the methods and results obtained, if the author’s own research was conducted, and the conclusions reached. A list of 5-7 keywords should also be included after the abstract.

7. We ask that authors are mindful of their language choices pertaining to disability and that they justify the use of controversial words.

8. Articles are peer-reviewed. Authors’ names and other identifying information must be removed in order to be sent to reviewers.

9. Authors are responsible for ethics approval for manuscripts by receiving approval from their own institutions. Proof of ethics approval (if applicable) should be provided to the journal.

10. The journal’s style generally follows the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association; English spelling follows the most recent edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

11. Manuscripts must be entirely double-spaced (including quotations, notes, references) in 12-point Times New Roman font.

12. The journal accepts footnotes, but only sparingly.

 

To submit, register as an author on our website:  https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cdd and undergo the submission process.  Registration is free.

If you have any questions, contact CDD Managerial Editor, Elisabeth Harrison, at cdsj@yorku.ca

For more information and updates, please visit http://cdssa.wordpress.com/