Book Launch: Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies: Critical Approaches in a Global Context

The Birkbeck Centre for Medical Humanities invites you to a book launch with wine reception for Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies: Critical Approaches in a Global Context edited by Tillie Curran and Katherine Runswick-Cole.

6pm-8pm, Friday 31st January

Peltz Gallery, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, Birkbeck, University of London, WC1H 0PD

Free and open to all, but registration required. Please email Harriet Cooper to register (h.cooper@bbk.ac.uk). Book Launch on Fri 31 Jan_’Disabled Children’s Childhood Studies’

 

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).

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/

 

CFP: Borders without Boundaries: Canadian Disability Studies Association 2014 Annual Conference (May 2014, Canada)

Call for Papers

Borders without Boundaries: Canadian Disability Studies Association 2014 Annual Conference

Date: Wednesday May 28 – Friday May 30, 2014

Where: Brock University, St. Catherines Ontario, Canada

**DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSIONS: extended to 15 November 2013**

The Canadian Disability Studies Association invites abstract submissions for papers to be presented at the 11th annual conference to be held at Brock University. Our CDSA meeting is part of the larger Congress 2014 of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

CDSA’s 2014 theme “Borders without Boundaries” reflects the overall Congress theme. We are seeking contributions that demonstrate the ways in which disability challenges, disturbs or blurs the borders of taken for granted or privileged practices in the global north and south. Should your critical work exist beyond or outside of these margins, we still welcome your response to the call.

Submissions are peer-reviewed by panels composed of: faculty, students, and community members.

The five major subthemes are as follows:

1. A disability studies perspective on borders without boundaries

How are images and ideas of disability used to separate, settle and contest cultural divides, political divisions and/or geographic regions? This subtheme broadly considers the relationship between disability and nation-making. We welcome submissions that explore:

• Disability in global culture and contexts
• Transnationalisms, border crossings and cosmopolitanisms
• Disability in relation to colonial continuums and post-/anti-colonial critiques
• Disability in relation to Aboriginal/First Nations communities
• Disability and environmental sustainability

2. Disability at the border of academic and activist scholarships

This subtheme broadly explores the tensions between the academic/activist interface. What counts as academic or activist work? What is valued? Can there be academic-activist scholarship? What is gained or loss in a blurring of these endeavours? We welcome submissions exploring:

• How activism is conceptualized within and without disability studies
• Disability activist scholarship in the academy
• Disability studies outreach and education in community-based activism
• Barriers and facilitators to academic-activist collaborations
• Disability activist scholarship and social justice

3. Disability at disciplinary borders

This subtheme broadly explores where disability studies is found and placed within the academy. Presentations that consider what makes Canadian Disability Studies distinct are especially encouraged. We welcome submissions exploring:

• The status and future directions of the field of disability studies in Canada and abroad
• Professional development for Canadian disability studies students
• The meaning and limitations of interdisciplinarity in contemporary educational regimes
• Strategies for troubling, queering and cripping discipline in the academy

4. Disability at the border of mainstream arts and culture

This subtheme explores the ways in which the category of ‘disability’ actively and tacitly creates cultural references, while disability is often simultaneously excluded from mainstream cultural representations. We welcome submissions, including performances or artistic displays, exploring:

• Arts-based research in disability studies
• Performances or displays of disability art
• Literary and cultural analyses using disability studies lenses
• Historical/contemporary disability communities and cultures

5. Beyond the boundaries of the bordered body – embodiment, technology and virtual spaces

This subtheme explores how disability troubles unexamined relations to the meaning and appearance of “bodies” and embodied relations. We welcome submissions exploring:

• Disability and the materiality of the body
• Disability, desire, gender and sexuality
• Disability, race and racialization
• The meaning of the ‘human’ and human/technology interfaces

Abstract guidelines:

All session formats are 90 minutes in length. There will be 3-4 papers per session and each paper will be 15-20 minutes in length depending upon the number of papers within the session.

Individual Papers – Individual presentations will be placed alongside two-three other panelists who share a similar focus. A submission will include the following: 1) name, affiliation and contact information 2) a biographical note: 100-150 words as a separate document 3) paper title and a 250 word abstract; the abstract should consist of the following:

• stated purpose and relevance to one or more of the conference themes
• significance of the proposal to the field
• include relevant literature to support your abstract
• explicit use of disability studies theory, perspective or concepts
• describe how the work was done
• contributions to research, theory, activism, advocacy or social change
• 4 or 5 key words that describe your abstract
• details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS).

Panels (3-5 more persons) – People submitting a panel abstract are asked to identify and submit proposals around a central topic, theme, or approach. The abstract should include the following:

• all information as stated in the Individual paper section as appropriate
• a panel title and a 350 word abstract that illustrates the coherence between each of the panel presentations

Workshops – Interactive sessions organized around a central theme. People submitting workshops should include:

• all information as stated in the Individual paper section as appropriate
• workshop title and a 350 word abstract; the description of the workshop’s objectives and content should be as specific as possible

Performances –This may include poetry reading, dance, a viewing, or an installation. We will do our best to provide a suitable space but please be prepared to improvise! Abstract should include:

• all information as stated in the Individual paper section as appropriate
• a performance title and a 350 word abstract; the description of the performance content should be as specific as possible

Submission Guidelines

1. Submit via email attachment to: cdsa.acei@gmail.com – by 15 November 2013. The subject line should read, “CDSA-ACEI proposal for Borders without Boundaries”.

2. Attachments should be in pdf format.

3. Please send in two documents for each abstract.

a. One abstract document will have your name, affiliation and complete contact information.

b. The second abstract document must be anonymous. Do not put your name or any other identifying information on the abstract. In addition, be sure to anonymize your pdf document by clicking on “File”, then “Properties”, removing your name if it appears in the “Author” line, and resaving before uploading it. If any identifying information is included on the abstract, the abstract will be returned to the author unevaluated.

We anticipate notifying participants of abstract status by Dec 14, 2013. If your paper is accepted for the 11th CDSA-ACEI conference at Congress you will need to register for Congress as well as for CDSA-ACEI. Registration will be open starting mid-January 2014. Instructions for how to register will be posted at www.congress2014.ca/register. We would appreciate speakers registering by Jan 30, 2014. If this is not possible please email us.

CFP: ‘Borders without Boundaries’ Canadian Disability Studies 2014 Annual Conference (May 2014, Canada)

Event: Borders without Boundaries: Canadian Disability Studies 2014 Annual Conference 

Date: Wednesday May 28- Friday May 30, 2014

Place: Brock University, St. Catherine’s, Ontario, Canada

Deadline For Abstract Submissions: 1 November 2013

The Canadian Disability Studies Association invites abstract submissions for papers to be presented at the 11th annual conference to be held at Brock University. Our CDSA meeting is part of the larger Congress 2014 of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

CDSA’s 2014 theme “Borders without Boundaries” reflects the overall Congress theme. We are seeking contributions that demonstrate the ways in which disability challenges, disturbs or blurs the borders of taken for granted or privileged practices in the global north and south. Should your critical work exist beyond or outside of these margins, we still welcome your response to the call.

More information can be found at: http://www.cdsa-acei.ca/CFP-Brock-2014-Final-%20Sept%2021.pdf

Seminar Announcement: Able-ism and the Question of the Human, 30th July, University of Toronto, Canada

“Able-ism and the Question of the Human” promises to provoke questions regarding the meaning of “human” that can be revealed in everyday assumptions of ability. How, for example, do medical, legal, or educational forms of engaging those who are typically excluded do more than confirm the normative order of able-ism or, worse, reproducing human degradation?

This free, public, accessible seminar brings us together with Drs. Dan Goodley from Sheffield University, UK; James Overboe, Waterloo University; Anne McGuire, New College, University Toronto along with Rinaldo Walcott and Tanya Titchkosky from OISE with Lead Discussant Dr Kirsty Liddiard, Post-Doc fellow from Ryerson University.

Free, Open, ASL and Refreshments provided
OISE, above St. George Subway, 252 Bloor Street West,
5th Floor, Room 5-280

Paper titles to follow

For access or other information contact tanya.titchkosky@utoronto.ca

 

Introducing… Jaime R. Brenes Reyes

From the very beginning, the DRF blog has include a space for brief biographical and contact details to be listed. The People section has been open to everyone and anyone interested in disability research.

Our most recent addition is:

Jaime R. Brenes Reyes: jbrenesr@uwo.ca – PhD student in Hispanic Studies, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, The University of Western Ontario, Canada. Jaime explores Latin American literature, with special focus on Julio Cortázar, from the perspective of disability studies. He is interested in the act of reading as a process through which the reader’s understanding of reality is challenged. For more information, please visit his blog.

Jaime’s current research explores the aura that arises when reading good literature. He argues that an analysis of literature as an epileptic episode may give us some clues. Based on his research on Latin American literature and literary theory (as well as his own experience of living with seizures), Jaime aims to explore whether the act of reading Argentine writer and essayist Julio Cortázar’s fiction can be understood as epileptical, taking as a framework Deleuze and Guattari’s schizo-analysis. His research may have important implications for the understanding of Cortázar’s oeuvre and the contextualization of neurological malfunctions from the viewpoint of literature.

If you are working on similar topics, or are interested in disability research and live/work near Jamie, please feel free to contact him on: jbrenesr@uwo.ca. He’s up for sharing ideas and having chats. 

If you’d like to have your biographical/contact details listed in the People section all it takes is an email to Rebecca Mallett (r.mallett@shu.ac.uk)