Call for papers

Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Celebrating 50 Years of Interdisciplinarity
An International Conference of the Society for Medical Anthropology

Sept 24-27, 2009 - Yale University

We are inviting participation in an organized session entitled:

Extending Disability Beyond Medicine’s Borders: A Five Fields Symphony
Lakshmi Fjord and Devva Kasnitz, Co-Organizers.Sponsored by the Disability Research Special Interest Group of the SMA

As more anthropologists include disability research in their field studies and populations, and as the interdisciplinary field of disability studies grows, the time has to come to make a better case for the significance of disability theory to anthropological canon in the five fields: cultural, linguistic, biological/physical, archaeology, and applied. An historic tie between disability and medicine, between notions of stigma and medicalization, has characterized the study of disabled people and their personhood in American anthropology. However, for people whose bodies are all too often reduced to a medical interpretation and rarely recognized for the critical lens they offer onto social inequalities and injustices, the role of critical disability theory to anthropological and interdisciplinary scholarship needs to be better understood and applied.

Over several decades, anthropologists working in diverse geographic regions have linked their field research on disability to the bread and butter issues of anthropology, including gender, “race,” ethnicity, nationalism, indigeneity, kinship, globalization, sexuality, and religion. In this session, panelists will link their current research to one or more of anthropology’s five fields, and to more encompassing interdisciplinary issues. Our aim is to initiate conversations about what disability theoretical and methodological frameworks bring to the table for anthropologists and others working within the humanities, social science, and science regarding research design, methods, and fieldwork; to theoretical understandings of social disparities and inequalities; and how different groups, from families to nations, cope with perceived embodied differences in abilities to perform linguistically, in work, in kinship expectations, in art, and all meaningful cultural domains.

Some possible topics:

* Linguistics: signed languages and identity or national language politics; speech and communication adaptations; discourse analysis; sociolinguistics; how “slowing down” for disabled people’s needs links to larger fieldwork issues about listening, watching, and being patient with respondents; ethics when working across language systems

* Citizenship and disability: the relation between nation-building projects and notions of “us” and “them”; indigeneity and personhood;

* Kinship and disability: families with disabled children, disabled parents; courtship and marriage; cross-ability marriages;

* Advocacy and “the field”: when the field is “home,” learning about disability through firsthand experience; participation in social justice movements; United Nations Treaty on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the discourse of human rights in local contexts; allyhood; links with feminist and race advocacy and histories; why advocacy is not for “special needs,” but for to redress systematic inequalities;

* Political economy of disability: links with gender, “race,” and ethnicity and immigration currently and historically; disability and work; transportation needs and economics;

* Inclusive design or universal design: architecture currently; archaeological examples from the past (or why stairs were not always the built answer); how disabled people locate cracks in systems and offer creative strategies towards inclusion for all members of societies;

* Fieldwork and ethnographic writing: autoethnography and experimentations with writing about experiential expertise;

* Applied work: medical clinics; occupational therapy and field schools; how we apply critical disability into everyday life.

Abstract information: Abstracts for papers and media presentations should be no longer than 200 words. Please send you proposed abstract to: Lakshmi Fjord: lakshmi.fjord@gmail.com; and Devva Kasnitz: devva@earthlink.net.

Deadline for first drafts is April first so we can submit the session by April 15th to SMA

Once we have created the session, as per the conference instructions, we will submit your abstract as part of our session. “Abstracts for presentations to be included in pre-organized panels and workshops should be submitted together by the organizer(s), along with a panel/workshop abstract.”

Everyone submitting an abstract must complete the online registration individually by April 15th. Notification about the status of submissions will be sent out by June 30, 2009 to the e-mail address provided in the abstract.

Cell Phone: 510-206-5767

Devva Kasnitz, PhD
Institute of Urban and Regional Development
University of California, Berkeley
EMAIL: devva@earthlink.net

Eureka Home Mailing Address:1614 D St
Eureka, CA 95501
Voice: 707-443-1973

Call for papers : William Carlos Williams and the Problems of Embodiment: Disability, Medicine and Trauma Studies

MLA CFP: William Carlos Williams and the Problems of Embodiment:
Disability, Medicine and Trauma Studies

William Carlos Williams Society announcement of CFP for panel entitled William Carlos Williams and the Problems of Embodiment: Disability, Medicine and Trauma Studies.

MLA convention, Philadelphia
27-30 Dec, 2009.

Papers are invited which focus on Williams's view of poetry as diagnostic, restorative, medicinal, or ameliorative. We especially seek papers centering on illness/disease/trauma/disability as embodied states of being as well as social, theoretical, critical, or conceptual figurations in Williams's writings. Please submit an abstract of one page and a short CV to http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=edith_vasquez%40pitzer.edu before 15 March 2009.

Edith Morris-Vásquez, PhD
Assistant Professor
English and World Literature
Pitzer College
1050 N Mills Avenue
Claremont CA 91711
(909) 607-2633

Call for Papers: Religion and Disability

American Academy of Religion
Annual Meeting
November 7-10, 2009
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Proposal Deadline: Monday March 2, 2009

The Religion and Disability Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion invites papers on the following topics:

1) Spirituality and disability - we invite papers that explore the spirituality of people with disabilities, as well as papers that reflect more generally on intersections of spirituality and disability theory;

2) Disability and leadership - recognizing that people with disabilities are not only found in the congregation, or behind a student desk, or in the audience of an AAR session, we invite papers that explore the roles and experiences of people with disabilities in leadership positions, such as clergy, professors, and scholars;

3) Different disabilities - we invite papers that highlight religion in a wider range of disability experiences, including mental illness, cognitive difference, and hidden disabilities;

4) For a joint session with the Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Group, we invite proposals responding to McRuer and Berube's Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability;

5) Finally, we invite paper proposals on any topic related to intersections of religion and disability.

Proposal (not more than 1000 words) and abstract (not more than 150 words) are due Monday March 2, 2009. Each presenter must be a member (or willing to become a member) of the American Academy of Religion.

For more information, see http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/redirect?url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.aarweb.org or send an e-mail to AAR R&DS Group

Chair: Debbie Creamer, Ph.D., Iliff School of Theology, http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=dcreamer%40iliff.edu

Call for papers: Disorderly Conduct (July 24-26, 2009)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Interdisciplinary Conference
July 24-26, 2009
Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Keynote speaker: Dr. Steven Angelides, Department of Women’s Studies, Monash University

Other featured speakers will be confirmed for the release of the official conference announcement to follow.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: February 27, 2009

The conference, “Disorderly Conduct” will bring together scholars from around the world and from such disciplines as sociology, philosophy, health studies, history, women’s studies, and medicine to explore and problematize the notion of a “disorder”. The conference seeks to bring front-line medical and mental health personnel who treat various “disorders” together with humanities, social science and health and disability studies scholars who work (in one way or another) on theoretical questions related both to specific “disorders” and to the notion of a disorder simpliciter. In workshops and symposia, conference participants will engage questions like the following: What, if any, are the downsides of being diagnosed with a disorder? Does the concept of a disorder provide treatment advantages or disadvantages? Are there other advantanges or disadvantages that it incurs, besides those related to the treatment itself, for those diagnosed with a disorder? Can we reasonably expect to avoid problems of stigmatization and marginalization by turning to a medicalized language of disorder to apprehend and explain embodied difference?

Conference organizers kindly invite submissions from scholars and health (physical and mental) professionals in all disciplines. Abstracts (500 words), papers (2500 words, 20 minute papers for delivery in 30 minute time slots), symposium proposals, workshop proposals, and roundtable discussion proposals will be considered. Proposals for symposia should include the names and affiliations of all participants and their papers or abstracts. Authors submitting abstracts should be prepared to submit final versions of their papers to the conference organizers by June 30.

All submissions will be anonymously reviewed; names should appear only on a cover page, and cover pages should be attached in a separate file. Authors’ names or other identifying information should be removed from the properties of files before submission. Authors should indicate on their title pages if they wish to have their submissions considered for inclusion in the published proceedings of the conference . All submissions should be emailed to both Morgan Holmes at mholmes at wlu dot ca and at Shannon Dea at sjdea at uwaterloo dot ca by midnight February 27, 2009. Authors should expect to know the decision of the program committee by around March 1, 2009.

Authors might consider submitting a proposal concerning one of the following (but should not feel confined by what is merely intended as a suggestive list):

*What relationship (if any) holds between the concepts, diagnosis and treatment of gender identity disorder and disorders of sexual development?

* What lessons should the editors of the inchoate DSM V take from the DSM IV?

* Is old age treated as a disorder? Should it be?

* What role does “big pharma” play in the identification of various disorders?

* Does our current notion of a disorder adequately reflect our understanding of the social determinants of health?

*How can we use the concept of “disorderly conduct” to subvert the use of labelling practices and normative medicine?

Conference organizers are currently seeking federal funding to support this conference. Contingent upon their success, they may be able to financially assist speakers with their travel and accommodations costs.

For more information on “Disorderly Conduct,” see the conference website at http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/~sjdea/.

(h/t What sorts of people)

Call for papers - Society for Disability Studies annual conference

SOCIETY FOR DISABILITY STUDIES
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
ANNUAL CONVENTION
2009

THEME: “IT’S ‘OUR’ TIME: PATHWAYS TO AND FROM DISABILITY STUDIES—PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE”

The Society for Disability Studies is pleased to announce a call for proposals for its annual convention, to be held June 18-21, 2009, in Tucson, Arizona, at the Hilton El Conquistador Resort. The theme for this convention is “It’s ‘Our’ Time: Pathways to and From Disability Studies—Past, Present, Future.” Time, in all its forms, conceptualizations, and manifestations, will be the central focus of the conference, though proposals on any topic relevant to Disability Studies are welcomed. We imagine a number of different ways of approaching the issue of time, a concept critical to all aspects of disability experience and culture:

Cultural: Is there such a thing as“disability time”? How do different cultural constructions and experiences of time affect people with disabilities?

Economic: How is time a form of “capital,” both for people with disabilities and those involved in the “disability industry?” For people with disabilities who must interact with ableist norms of time in the labor force?

Political: What is disability’s “moment in 2009, a time when, whatever the outcome of elections in the U.S. and elsewhere, “change,” a temporal and political idea, is declaimed and echoed in much rhetoric. What current issues are particularly “timely” for disability studies—and how are such issues tied to past and future?

Educational: How do issues of time, including controversies around and resistance to accommodations around time for people with disabilities, play themselves out in educational environments?

Psychological/Philosophical: What does phenomenology’s enduring interest in internal time consciousness have to offer to understanding the intersection of disability experience and cross-ability inter-subjectivity? How is individual experience of time related to such realms as social and community psychology? Do different disabilities lead to different psychologies and/or philosophies of time?

Historical: History is, in a sense, the “biggest” unit of time. How do different eras view the role of time in disability experience? What is the relationship between disability history and temporality? Both studies of specific historical moments of disability and cross-historical studies are welcome.

The Arts: How is time represented in literary, visual, musical, performing, and mediated forms of art? How are questions of duration and endurance crucial to the roles of artists with disabilities in the social and cultural domains of the arts?

Medicine/Science: How do issues of longevity, physical and psychological capability,and social regulation of the lives of people with disabilities affect access and opportunities? How are medicine and science reconfiguring time and creating new conceptions of futures?

These are only suggestions of possible directions proposals around the convention theme might take—we imagine members will go off in many more directions as well. After all, it’s “our” time.

PROPOSALS ARE DUE NO LATER THAN JANUARY 15, 2009. For specifics about formats and submission guidelines, see the SDS conference website.

Conference co-chairs for the 2009 convention are: Christine McCohnell, Ramapo College ofNew Jersey, Joan Ostrove, Macalester College, and Bruce Henderson, Ithaca College.

Questions may be directed to the co-chairs at sdsconference2009@yahoo.com

Proposals will be reviewed by the conference Program Committee: Christine Komoroski-McCohnell, Bruce Henderson, Joan Ostrove (co-chairs); Shilpaa Anand, Susan Baglieri, Christopher Bell, Allison Carey, Michael Chemers, Jim Ferris, Deborah Little, Carol Marfisi, Akemi Nishida, Michael Rembis, and Cindy Wu.

Call for Papers - Journal for Disability and International Development - Women with Disabilities

Journal for Disability and International Development - Call for Contributions
Issue 01-2009
Deadline: 31.01.2009

Topic: Women with Disabilities: Identification and Participation in the Women's and Disability Movement

Since the early 1990s, women with disabilities have increasingly been calling for the recognition and inclusion of the gender dimension to disability, both in disability politics and in the women's movement.

The women's movement as such has been emphasising on the multiple dimensions that make up the diverse situations of women around the world. While it therefore could have been key to addressing the specific concerns of women with disabilities, it has fallen short of acknowledging disability as an added liability in the past. As such, disability has long been ignored by the
mainstream women's movement both in theory and practice.

At the same time, the disability movement has, in its beginnings, conveyed disability as a homogeneous aspect: In its efforts to bring disability to the public's attention, individual diversities in impairments and other dimensions to disability such as the gender dimension, were largely neglected which finally led to limited agendas, excluding women with disabilities over long periods.

Where do we stand now and how has the situation for women with disabilities changed?

Since recent years the international legal framework for women with disabilities has changed positively. Global and regional networks of disabled women have been formed and are now actively promoting their agenda in both the women's as well as the disability movement. Stakeholders of both movements are increasingly engaging in dialogue or are openly recognising and even including the perspective of women with disabilities.

This issue 01-2009 of the Journal of Disability and International Development intends to look at how these changes have been translated into practice and how these developments have impacted on the identification and participation of women with disabilities in both movements.

Suggestions for contributions:

We welcome contributions especially with a regional or country-specific perspective on:

- What are lessons learned/success stories in bringing/including women with disabilities onto the agenda of both movements?

- How does culture influence the promotion and perception of the rights of women with disabilities in these movements?

- What are barriers for women with disabilities in becoming active participants/actors in the disability and/or women's movement? Which developments have the disability and/or women's rights movement undergone with regards to women with disabilities?

- What are ways and means for ensuring the integration of the rights of disabled women and participation of disabled women in these movements?

- What is the impact of these developments on identity and self-perception of women with disabilities as individuals as well as in organisations?

- What are the developments with regard to women with disabilities in these movements in the academic field/research and teaching?

- What has been the influence of including a gender dimension in disability and development on the policy and programming work of international development organisations, especially those working in the field of disability in development of women in development?

Contact:

Dr. Christiane Noe: http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=Noe.Christiane%40web.de

Susanne Wilm: Susanne_Wilm@yahoo.de

The Journal for Disability and International Development is published by the forum 'Disability and International Development,' and is available online at: http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/redirect?url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.zbdw.de.

Call for papers: Bodily Differences - Social and Scientific Technologies of Self-Making

May 8 & 9, 2009
Laurentian University
Ontario, Canada

"I mean for us to embrace our myriad of bodily differences, to understand our lives as ordinary and familiar from the inside, even as we’re treated as curious, exotic, unbelievable, deceptive, threatening from the outside..... I mean for us to embrace our bodily differences while never forgetting the ways in which the world privileges some bodies and marginalizes others. Bodily difference as neither good nor bad, but as a simple fact of life: gender wrapping around sexuality hanging onto race compounding class pulling at disability, all of it finally piling into our tender, resilient human bodies where the answers are ultimately not about doctors, even for those of us who transition, but about self love, community, and liberation" (Eli Clare 2007).

“Bodily difference” is never natural: how bodies are made different from one another has always to do with the social worlds into which they enter and by which they are shaped. Theorists from Aristotle to Marx and from Darwin to Haraway have explored the relationships among worlds, skills, machines, social practices, and bodies. This conference seeks to unpack the social and scientific technologies through which “difference” becomes socially significant. In diverse ways, there has been important work on how machines are made to fit bodies and how bodies in turn are shaped in relation to machines, as well as on questions of how technology is social, and how the social world is technological. Technologies are themselves embedded in circuits of capitalism and colonialism, sometimes best expressed in current connections between science funding and science practice. Understanding embodiment requires us to contemplate complex systems from the lab to the clinic to the media outlet to the library to the university classroom and beyond. We invite papers that explore questions such as:

. How can scientists and people in science studies have meaningful dialogue?

. How is scientific knowledge-making racialized?

. Is it possible to “do” science within capitalist models of science-as-enterprise without succumbing to capital’s imperatives? In a world where funding agencies and private partnerships determine which work gets done, how might we resist capitalism in the practice of science?

. How are classificatory practices important to the production of social worlds?

. How are social practices, like pronoun use and gender recognition, technologies for shaping gender?

. What do current research practices in medicine teach us about the gendered body?

Since temporary able-bodiedness is a product of our social worlds, how can we better work with bodily difference as, in Eli Clare’s words, a simple fact of life?

. How are cross-species bodily differences shaped, torqued, and understood? How might such differences shift our understandings of what it is to count as human?

. How are sex and gender integrated into biological and medical research? How are such differences not incorporated into these realms?

We hope for this conference to be a site for engaged cross-pollination and active discussion, and invite panel proposals and papers that foreground this kind of work. Presentations do not have to take standard academic form. Please send 250 word abstracts by February 15th, 2009 to Alexis Shotwell (ashotwell@laurentian.ca)

Alexis Shotwell Assistant
Professor Department of Philosophy
Laurentian University
935 Ramsey Lake Road Sudbury
Ontario P3E 2C6
705-675-1151 ext. 3709
ashotwell@laurentian.ca
http://alexis.shotwell.googlepages.com/

(this cfp was sent to my women's studies list serv from Shana L. Calixte, Women's Studies Program, Laurentian University, SCalixte@laurentian.ca)

Call for papers: Representing Disability and Emotion

From: Elizabeth Donaldson (via Penny Richards)

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
CFP Representing Disability and Emotion
Guest Edited by Catherine Prendergast and Elizabeth J. Donaldson

Several fields in the humanities including literary studies have
recently turned their attention to emotion, reconsidering its
traditional figuration as interior, private, and apolitical. This
work asks us to consider instead how emotions and affective
expressions are constructed, valued, performed, and regulated.

JLCDS encourages submissions that will put this burgeoning work on
emotion and affect into conversation with disability studies for a
special issue on Disability and Emotion. How does this new work on
emotion and affect take up or leave out disability in considering
pain, the body, and the psyche? How do certain emotional states or
affects become construed as impairments? How has disability been
emotionally configured in literary texts?

We especially encourage work that will examine and interrogate the
emotional politics of disability studies itself. Disability studies
has been founded on a moment of emotional reformation: The clarion
call of "No Pity" sought to arrest an emotional response and its
attendant politics. How has that clarion call both launched and
regulated the study of emotion in disability studies?

Proposals should be e-mailed to the guest editors Catherine
Prendergast (http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=cprender%40uiuc.edu)
and Elizabeth Donaldson
(http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=edonalds%40nyit.edu) before 1 May 2009.

The final typescripts will be due before 1 November 2009.

Further information is available on the JLCDS website.
http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/redirect?url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.jlcds.org
http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=subscriptions%40marston.co.uk

Also available through Project MUSE

Call for Abstracts

*** Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules in Public Spaces ***

Co-Editors, Chris Bobel, University of Massachusetts Boston and Samantha Kwan, University of Houston

This edited collection will assemble scholarly yet accessibly written works that explore the dimensions of resistance to embodied taboos of all sorts. We are interested in pieces that describe and analyze the many ways that humans subvert the social constraints that deem certain behaviors and bodily presentations as inappropriate, disgusting, private and/or forbidden in various cultural and historical contexts. Empirical, historical, theoretical and narrative contributions are equally welcome.

This book, intended as a supplemental text for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms, aims to advance and deepen our understanding of the motivations, experiences and consequences associated with the bodies that break the rules through the (intersecting) lenses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, religiosity, disability, class and nation.

The editors welcome submissions from scholars in a range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, women's and gender studies, anthropology, science studies, cultural studies, literary studies, disability studies, psychology, and history. We especially encourage scholarship which focuses on areas outside the US and the West.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, practices that challenge:

- Traditional attire norms, e.g., older women who do not "dress their age," fat women who "show skin," and parents who refuse to dress their children in traditional gender attire

- Conventional hair and body norms, e.g., women who conspicuously do not shave, youth who experiment with hair colors and cuts, and individuals with numerous and various forms of body art

- The binary construction of gender, e.g., various practices and performances by individuals who identify as transgender, queer, ormetrosexual=20

- Biological processes considered contextually taboo, e.g., mothers who conspicuously breastfeed in public and women who do not hide the fact of their menstruation

- Physical conditions that carry stigma, e.g., cancer patients who do not conceal their hair loss, HIV positive people who speak openly about their HIV status, and intersex individuals who publicly discuss their condition

- Cultural, religious, and/or ethnic norms, e.g., Muslim womenwho wear hijab in spite of policies or laws that forbid veiling and Falun Gong practitioners who meditate in public demonstrations

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: We invite authors to submit an abstract on or before December 19, 2008. Submissions should take the form of a 250-500 word abstract outlining the intent and scope of the paper, and where appropriate, author's theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological framework. Authors will be notified by February 13, 2009 about the status of their proposal. Full papers are expected by May 29, 2009.

Please direct inquiries and submissions to BOTH editors:

Chris Bobel chris.bobel@umb.edu
Samantha Kwan sskwan@uh.edu

Call for submissions: The Body as a Site of Discrimination - A Multidisciplinary, Multimedia Online Journal

The Body as a Site of Discrimination will be an interactive,educational, multi-disciplinary, high quality, critical, and cuttingedge online journal. This creative project will fulfill the degreerequirements for two Master's of Social Work students at SFSU. This is a call for submissions to explore the following themes, but other interpretations are also encouraged.

- Disability and Ableism
- Fatphobia or Size Discrimination
- Ageism
- Racism
- Gender Discrimination
- Transphobia, non-conforming gender identities, sexual assault, sexism, and reproductive rights

Cultural and academic communities are invited to contribute for a well-rounded exploration of the theme. The significance of this project is to examine the intersectionality between varying forms of body-based oppressions. Crossing disciplines is necessary to understand this matrix of discrimination and will lead to inventive strategies of change and resistance. The outcome of this journal will contribute to the body of knowledge and serve as a resource for subsequent generations of social workers and other helping professionals.

Entries can explore activism and resistance around these issues, focus on social justice, and implications for social work practice and policy. Representative voices from the identified communities are encouraged to submit. Submissions can include personal narratives, research articles, performance and visual art, fiction, poetry, music, etc. Electronic copies of submissions will be considered for publication.

All submissions must be received by January 15, 2009 to bodydiscrimination@gmail.com

Please pass on this call to any interested parties and contact us if you have any questions.

Thank You

Editors-in-Chief
The Body as a Site of Discrimination

h/t to Charlotte at Obesity TimeBomb, and Shelly Tremain, What Sorts of People

CFP: Special Issue of Disability Studies Quarterly on Autism

Submission deadline: Jan. 1 2009

Projected publication date: Summer 2010

Co-editors: Emily Thornton Savarese, University of Iowa, and Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College

We are looking for completed articles, from a disability studies perspective, on what the medical community refers to as ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). We are especially interested in pieces that engage the so-called “low-functioning” end of the spectrum, where increasingly those presumed retarded and lacking social awareness are writing back to the empire of science. As the field of disability studies has theorized cognitive difference, it has had to refine its cherished social-constructionist approach, making sure to account for physiological distinctiveness in the organ of sensibility, a distinctiveness that has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, most quite prejudicial. We are interested in the burgeoning neurodiversity movement, which has self-consciously resisted such prejudicial interpretations, often revealing the “science” of autism to be anything but reliable and objective. How to talk about autistic difference? How to represent it? How to convey its gifts and challenges? Who can talk about it? What role should parents play in this representational arena? What role should teachers, doctors, researchers, therapists, media entities, and academics play? What kind of interdisciplinary approaches are needed to understand, respect, and even cherish autism?

We are open to the widest array of progressive approaches and topics. The latter include, but are not limited to, issues of:

race/ethnicity

sexuality

self-representation/autobiography

movement and cognition

perceptual acuities

popular cultural representations

internet

blogging

literacy

communication

the arts

treatments, cures, prevention

science/research

eugenics

education/inclusion

disability rights

employment

perseveration, echolalia

independence


Questions or queries may be sent to emsavarese@hotmail.com or savarese@grinnell.edu

Call for Papers: Bodies in Motion - University of Rhode Island Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference

"Bodies in Motion"
The University of Rhode Island’s Third Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference.
Saturday, March 28th, 2009.
Submission Deadline, Friday, November 28th, 2008.

Across academic disciplines, "bodies" — animal, epistemological, textual, or otherwise — defy singular definition and elude our efforts to pin them down. As they parallel, intersect, and inform one another, these "bodies" demand rigorous research, creative thinking, and ever-evolving methodologies. How do we account for these "bodies in motion" and the complex ecologies of knowledge that they form? From what critical perspectives — scientific, mathematic, literary,
historical, political, rhetorical, ethical, philosophical — can we examine these "bodies" in order to learn from them and from others? The graduate community at the University of Rhode Island invites submissions for posters, papers, presentations, performances and panels from a variety of disciplines exploring "bodies in motion."

Possible topics and areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Theorizing the body or bodies
• Bodies and environmental crisis
• The legal body
• Economic bodies
• Political bodies
• Bodies and health care
• Biotechnology and ethics of the body
• Mass media and the global image of bodies
• Migration, displacement, and/or diasporas
• Bodies in literature
• Bodies as machines/Machines as bodies
• The aesthetics of movement
• Bodies in the digital age
• Bodies and the flow of technology
• Artistic interpretations of the body

Submission Guidelines:

Please propose individual papers or panels and indicate whether you are willing to moderate a panel. Panels of 3-4 presentations are especially welcome.

To propose a paper, submit a cover page with your name; institutional affiliation; contact information (mailing address, phone number, and email); a 250-word abstract of the paper; a roughly 100-word bio; anda detailed request for audiovisual equipment (if needed).
Presentations will be limited to fifteen minutes (about seven double-spaced pages).

To propose a panel, submit a cover page including the title of the panel and the names of presenters; a panel abstract of 150-250 words; a separate page with the names of presenters, their contact information (mailing address, phone number, and email) and institutional affiliation(s), the titles of their presentations; and a 250-word abstract for each paper. Panels will be one hour and fifteen minutes long.

The conference committee requests the submission of materials in the body of an email or as an attachment in a Word, text, or PDF document. All submissions should be emailed to http://webmail.rochester.rr.com/do/mail/message/mailto?to=gradcon%40etal.uri.edu. Please refer any questions you may have to this address as well.

The deadline for submissions is 8:00 a.m. on Friday, November 28th, 2008. Notification of acceptance will be by Friday, December 19th, 2008.

Stephen Marchand
University of Rhode Island
114 Swan Hall
Phone: 401-874-5931
Fax: 401-874-2580
Email: gradcon@etal.uri.edu

Call for Proposals: 25th Annual Pacific Rim International Conference on Disabilities

May 4-5, 2009 • Honolulu, Hawai‘i • Hawai‘i Convention Center

Working toward a brighter future

The Center on Disability Studies (http://www.cds.hawaii.edu/) at theUniversity of Hawai‘i cordially invites you to the 25th Annual PacificRim International Conference on Disabilities on May 4-5, 2009 inHonolulu, Hawai‘i. Celebrate the collective achievements of the past and look forward to create an inclusive vision for the 21st century. As we face economic uncertainty and global challenges, it is even more important to honor tradition, and use this foundation to navigate ourfutures.

In the tradition of PacRim, the 2009 conference will revisit familiar themes and explore new directions through scholarship, best practice,and international networking. Join us, and continue this extraordinary journey. We will have several pre and post conference sessions, including an accessible sports Sunday at the beach; an international film festival; and the 2nd Annual International Forum: Securing theRights of Persons with Disabilities: Eradicating Poverty.

Envisioning the Future

· To achieve human and social progress we will address poverty.

· To maximize human potential we will highlight indigenous/nativepeoples; girls and women; and veterans with disabilities.

· To realize our dreams for inclusion and self-determination, we will ensure all people have access to services and opportunities: transitionto adulthood, employment, family support, independent living.

· To create an accessible world, we will showcase Universal Design forLearning and Living and feature products and design elements for home,school, play and office.

· To ensure our future we will prepare our youth to take responsibilityfor the future by bringing them together to dialogue about experiences,visions, insights, and futures.

· To support your attendance PacRim 2009 will provide an early acceptance notice within 2-3 weeks of your submission. Conference ratesare very reasonable and we have secured room blocks for under $160 pernight. We will also help facilitate room-shares if you are trying tokeep your costs low. We all need to be together!

If you are only able to attend one conference this year, choose PacRim2009 in Waikiki, Hawaii at the beautiful Hawaii Convention Center.

Traditionally this conference is one of the most exciting for attendees and presenters – providing a unique balance of cultures, and issues oflocal, national and international importance. This year’s conference will seek to better these efforts and provide you with a most unique and exceptional experience – we hope to be seeing you in Honolulu inMay.

Robert Stodden
Director, the Center on Disability Studies

Charmaine CrockettCo-Chair, PacRim 2009

Valerie ShearerCo-Chair, PacRim 2009

Web Site Links

Text Only version of the Call for Papers http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/ad/callforpapers2009/text.html
About PacRim: http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/
PacRim Themes:http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/pacriminfo/pacrim2009/topics/
Submission: http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/submissions/
Registration: http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/registration/
About the Convention Center: http://www.hawaiiconvention.com/

Call for papers

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A SPECIAL ISSUE OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FEMINIST APPROACHES TO BIOETHICS (IJFAB)

Vol. 3, no. 2, Fall, 2010

From the Margins to the Center:
Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics

Guest Editor, Shelley Tremain

In recent years, work done in mainstream bioethics has been challenged by the emerging field of disability studies.

A growing number of disability theorists and activists point out that the views about disability and disabled people that mainstream bioethicists have articulated on matters such as prenatal testing, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide incorporate significant misunderstandings about them and amount to an institutionalized form of their oppression.

While some feminist bioethicists have paid greater attention to the perspectives and arguments of disabled people than other bioethicists, these perspectives and arguments are rarely made central. Feminist disability theory remains marginalized even within feminist bioethics.

This issue of IJFAB will go some distance to move feminist disability studies from the margins to the center of feminist bioethics by highlighting the contributions to and interventions in bioethics that feminist disability studies is uniquely situated to make.

The guest editor seeks contributions to the issue on any topic related to feminist disability studies and bioethics, including (but not limited to):

Critiques of bioethics by feminist disability theorists from within feminist bioethics

The relevance of feminist disability studies in developing countries

- What is still missing from feminist arguments in the debates about stem cell research and other forms of biotechnology

- The importance of perspectives of disabled embodiment in feminist bioethics

- How the critiques of bioethics advanced in disability studies are gendered

- The integration of political analyses of disability into feminist bioethics

- The critique of notions of normalcy embedded in (feminist) bioethics

- The reevaluation of feminist approaches to care from a feminist disability studies perspective

Articles should be 3,000 - 8,000 words in length. Shorter pieces written for the Commentaries section of the issue should be 2,000-3,000 words in length.

All submissions should be double-spaced, prepared for anonymous review (no identifying references in the body of the text or bibliography), accompanied by an abstract of 150 words, and prepared in accordance with the journal's style guidelines which are posted on the IJFAB website (http://www.blogger.com/ .).

Contact information – email address, street address, and affiliation (if applicable) – should appear on a separate page which also includes a statement verifying that the work has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Submissions should be sent as email attachments in Microsoft Word or rtf to Shelley Tremain at http://www.blogger.com/

The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2009. The guest editor strongly encourages authors to contact her before completing their submissions.

Call for papers - Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion & Disability: Change, Challenge, & Collaboration

Ninth Annual Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion & Disability:Change, Challenge, & Collaboration

April 28 and 29, 2009

The Ohio State University Columbus Campus

Conference information past programs and updates can be found at: http://ada.osu.edu/conferences.htm

To be on the mailing list for the conference, send e-mail to ADA-OSU@osu.edu <mailto:ADA-OSU@osu.edu>

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

(Proposals are due November, 2008 ) The Ninth Annual Multiple Perspectives conference continues the university’s efforts to bring together a diverse audience to explore disability as both an individual experience and social reality that cuts across typical divisions of education & employment; scholarship & service; business & government; race, gender & ethnicity.

This year’s theme “Change, Challenge & Collaboration” reflects the critical place in history we occupy. Between last conference and this call for papers the United Nations has adopted the Convention on Disability, Congress passed a new GI bill and the Higher Education Opportunity Act which include a significant focus on disability; the Access Board is proposing changes in Section 508, the Department of Justice is in the final stages of a comprehensive review and update of the regulations for the ADA’s Titles II and III; and the ADA Amendments of 2008 are working their way through Congress. The theme and the quotes below are offered as a guide to framing your proposals and considering your topics from a fresh perspective.

“Disability Studies should serve as an access ramp between the disability community and research universities." Paul K. Longmore

“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

“Congress acknowledged that society’s accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment”. Justice William J. Brennan

“Continue to surprise those who would put you in a neat demographic. Be insistently curious." Gordon Gee

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Proposals are due November 1, 2008

By e-mail as an attachment (Word, Word Perfect, TXT, or RTF formats)
to ADA-OSU@osu.edu <mailto:ADA-OSU@osu.edu>

* By Fax at 614-688-3665 (FAX)

In the mail: Uiversity ADA Coordinator’s Office1849 Cannon Drive Columbus, OH 43210.

Proposals must include: Names and (as appropriate) titles and institutions for each presenter.
Contact information (phone, mailing address, and e-mail) if there is more than one presenter please indicate one individual as the lead presenter.
Title of Presentation (12 words or less)
Short Description (30 words or less)
FULL DESCRIPTION In 700 words or less please describe the structure, content, focus and desired outcomes for the presentation using these questions as a guide.
1. What is the format of the presentation (Lecture, Panel, Discussion, Poster*, Performance, Other)?
2. What are your three main goals for the presentation?
3. What will your participants learn?4. Who is the intended audience (educators, employers, businesses, advocates, students, consumers, researchers, etc.?
5. How familiar should the audience be with the topic (beginner, intermediate, advanced)?

Please Note:The full conference fees will be waived and lunch provided for presenters of accepted proposals. Presenters are responsible for their own travel and lodging.

*Poster sessions proposed by currently enrolled students (graduate & undergraduate) will be accepted through March 30, 2009.

Call for Abstracts: Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules in Public Spaces

Call for Abstracts

Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules in Public Spaces

Co-Editors, Chris Bobel, University of Massachusetts Boston and Samantha Kwan, University of Houston

This edited collection will assemble scholarly yet accessibly written works that explore the dimensions of resistance to embodied taboos of all sorts. We are interested in pieces that describe and analyze the many ways that humans subvert the social constraints that deem certain behaviors and bodily presentations as inappropriate, disgusting, private and/or forbidden in various cultural and historical contexts. Empirical, historical, theoretical and narrative contributions are equally welcome. This book, intended as a supplemental text for use in undergraduate and graduate classrooms, aims to advance and deepen our understanding of the motivations, experiences and consequences associated with the bodies that break the rules through the (intersecting) lenses of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, culture, religiosity, class and nation. The editors welcome submissions from scholars in a range of disciplines, including but not limited to sociology, women’s and gender studies, anthropology, science studies, cultural studies, literary studies, disability studies, psychology, and history. We especially encourage scholarship which focuses on areas outside the US and the West.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, practices that challenge:

- Traditional attire norms, e.g., older women who do not “dress their age,” fat women who “show skin,” and parents who refuse to dress their children in traditional gender attire

- Conventional hair and body norms, e.g., women who conspicuously do not shave, youth who experiment with hair colors and cuts, and individuals with numerous and various forms of body art

- The binary construction of gender, e.g., various practices and performances by individuals who identify as transgender, queer, or metrosexual

- Biological processes considered contextually taboo, e.g., mothers who conspicuously breastfeed in public and women who do not hide the fact of their menstruation

- Physical conditions that carry stigma, e.g., cancer patients who do not conceal their hair loss, people with HIV/AIDS who speak openly about their infection status, and intersex individuals who publicly discuss their condition

- Cultural, religious, and/or ethnic norms, e.g., Muslim women who wear hijab in spite of policies or laws that forbid veiling and Falun Gong practitioners who meditate in public demonstrations

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: We invite authors to submit an abstract on or before December 19, 2008. Submissions should take the form of a 250-500 word abstract outlining the intent and scope of the paper, and where appropriate, author’s theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological framework. Authors will be notified by February 13, 2009about the status of their proposal. Full papers are expected by May 29, 2009.

Please direct inquiries and submissions to BOTH editors at:

Chris Bobelchris.bobel@umb.eduSamantha Kwan sskwan@uh.edu

CFP: Special Issue of Disability Studies Quarterly on Autism

Submission deadline: Jan. 1, 2009

Projected publication date: Summer 2010

Co-editors: Emily Thornton Savarese, University of Iowa, and

Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell College

We are looking for completed articles, from a disability studies perspective, on what the medical community refers to as ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). We are especially interested in pieces that engage the so-called “low-functioning” end of the spectrum, where increasingly those presumed retarded and lacking social awareness are writing back to the empire of science. As the field of disability studies has theorized cognitivedifference, it has had to refine its cherished social-constructionist approach, making sure to account for physiological distinctiveness in the organ of sensibility, a distinctiveness that has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, most quite prejudicial. We are interested in the burgeoning neurodiversity movement, which has self-consciously resisted such prejudicial interpretations, often revealing the “science” of autism to beanything but reliable and objective. How to talk about autistic difference? How to represent it? How to convey its gifts and challenges? Who can talk about it? What role should parents play in this representational arena? What role should teachers, doctors, researchers, therapists, media entities, and academics play? What kind of interdisciplinary approaches are needed to understand, respect, and even cherish autism?

We are open to the widest array of progressive approaches and topics. The latter include, but are not limited to issues of:

race/ethnicity
sexuality
self-representation/autobiography
movement and cognition
perceptual acuities
popular cultural representations
internetblogging
literacycommunication
the arts
treatments, cures, prevention
science/research
eugenics
education/inclusion
disability rightsemployment
perseveration, echolalia
independence

Questions or queries may be sent to emsavarese@hotmail.com orsavarese@grinnell.edu

Call for papers

The Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies is seeking proposals for Blindness and Literature, which will be guest-edited by Georgina Kleege; and Disabling Postcolonialism, which will be guest-edited by Clare Barker and Stuart Murray. For more information please visit http://www.journalofliterarydisability.com/.

Call for papers

9th Annual Second City Conference onDisability Studies in Education
in partnership with the Syracuse University Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies

Conference on Disability Studies and Law

May 1-3, 2009

Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Righting Educational Wrongs:
Disability Studies in Education, Policy & Law

CALL FOR PAPERS

This jointly sponsored conference will explore the relationship between disability studies in education, policy and law. The conference is co-sponsored by Disability Studies in Education, the Syracuse University Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, the SU College of Law Disability Law and Policy Program, and the SU School of Education.

Disability Studies involves the critical examination of the role of"normalcy" in society. It requires us to recognize, appreciate, and most importantly, value difference. To the extent that legal education examines how to recognize, legitimate, and allocate differences--different rights, responsibilities, resources, and even justice within society, DisabilityStudies provides a lens through which we can analyze the meaning of such differences within our legal and educational systems, and in the larger society. Further, putting law and disability studies in education in conversation provides a rich context from which to question issues of power, privilege, and to consider how differences are defined within education and legal systems.

Syracuse University is particularly well suited to host this precedent-setting conference. Syracuse University is home to one of th enation's first graduate programs in Disability Studies and the first joint degree program in Law and Disability Studies. SU's School of Education has been a pioneer in the inclusion and deinstitutionalization movements in the United States, making way for all learners to participate fully in schools and in the community.

The Disability Studies in Education (DSE), a special interest group of AERA, seeks to cultivate interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the phenomenon of disability. DSE is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship that engages in research, policy, and action that contextualizes disability within political and social spheres; privileges the interest, agendas, and voices of people labeled with disability/disabled people; promotes social justice, equitable and inclusive educational opportunities, and full and meaningful access to all aspects of society for people labeled with disability/disabled people; and rejects deficit models of disability. This year's conference will bring together scholars in disability studies in education and disability law to explore both the history of disability advocacy and continued struggles for disability rights in educational contexts.

We welcome conference proposals that engage one of the embedded conference themes:

(1) Histories of exclusion & activism;

(2) Discourses & practices that shift the conversation from inclusion to belonging;

(3) Critical & theoretical perspectives on disability studies, law & policy;

(4) Global perspectives on disability studies in education & law.

We welcome joint proposals from presenters representing more than one constituency or that combine multiple fields of study. We welcome a range of presentation formats including:

. Workshop Sessions - Generative spaces that encourage collaboration and active participation directed toward the creation of policy imperatives or action plans/projects;

· Paper and Panel Presentations - To stimulate further thought and action;

· Alternative Formats - That engage multiple modalities &/or audience participation.

Often a highlight of the conference, we will again be honoring a Senior and Junior Scholar on the opening night of the conference. We will also hold a town hall meeting at the close of the conference where the conference attendees will meet to discuss future conferences and plans. We also have anumber of plenary sessions planned featuring leading scholars in the field. All presenters will be expected to pay the conference registration fee. Inaddition, if your proposal is selected, you may be requested to forward handouts or copies of papers several weeks ahead of time (April 1st) to facilitate preparation of alternative formats.

Proposal Guidelines

Submissions must include the following:

1. A proposal cover sheet including for each presenter, the name, institutional affiliation, address, paper title, phone number, email address, preferred format: workshop, paper presentation, panel presentation, alternative format (please describe).

2. A 2-3 page double-spaced proposal including a summary of your paper; a statement about how it relates to one of the four embedded conference themes; a list of alternative formats that you will provide (large print, electronic copy of presentation on CD; etc.).

3. A brief abstract (100-200 words) of your presentation for the conference program.

4. Proposals must be submitted electronically as a WORD attachment or PDF tothe Conference website: http://www.disabilitystudiesineducation.org/

Proposals must be received by November 1, 2008 in order to be considered. Presenters will be notified in early December.

Call for contributions

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO A SPECIAL ISSUE OF INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FEMINIST APPROACHES TO BIOETHICS (IJFAB)

Vol. 3, no. 2, Spring, 2010

From the Margins to the Center: Feminist Disability Studies and/in Feminist Bioethics

Guest Editor, Shelley Tremain

In recent years, work done in mainstream bioethics has been challenged by the emerging field of disability studies.

A growing number of disability theorists and activists point out that the views about disability and disabled people that mainstream bioethicists have articulated on matters such as prenatal testing, stem cell research, and physician-assisted suicide incorporate significant misunderstandings about them and amount to an institutionalized form of their oppression.

While some feminist bioethicists have paid greater attention to the perspectives and arguments of disabled people than other bioethicists, these perspectives and arguments are rarely made central. Feminist disability theory remains marginalized even within feminist bioethics.

This issue of IJFAB will go some distance to move feminist disability studies from the margins to the center of feminist bioethics by highlighting the contributions to and interventions in bioethics that feminist disability studies is uniquely situated to make.

The guest editor seeks contributions to the issue on any topic related to feminist disability studies and bioethics, including (but not limited to):

• Critiques of bioethics by feminist disability theorists from within feminist bioethics

• The relevance of feminist disability studies in developing countries

• What’s still missing from feminist arguments in the debates about stem cell research and other forms of biotechnology

• The importance of perspectives of disabled embodiment in feminist bioethics

• How the critiques of bioethics advanced in disability studies are gendered

• The integration of political analyses of disability into feminist bioethics

• The critique of notions of normalcy embedded in (feminist) bioethics

• The reevaluation of feminist approaches to care from a feminist disability studies perspective


Articles should be 3,000 - 8,000 words in length. Shorter pieces written for the Commentaries section of the issue should be 2,000-3,000 words in length.

All submissions should be double-spaced, prepared for anonymous review (no identifying references in the body of the text or bibliography), accompanied by an abstract of 150 words, and prepared in accordance with the journal’s style guidelines which are posted on the IJFAB website (http://www.ijfab.org/ .).

Contact information – email address, street address, and affiliation (if applicable) – should appear on a separate page which also includes a statement verifying that the work has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Submissions should be sent as email attachments in Microsoft Word or rtf to Shelley Tremain at s.tremain@yahoo.ca

The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2009. The guest editor strongly encourages authors to contact her before completing their submissions.