Society for Disability Studies 21st Annual Conference
New York City, June 18-22, 2008
?Cosmopolitan? Disability Studies Crips the City?
Submission Deadline: 1 December 2007
As Disability Studies becomes more aware of the boundaries of its own
discourses, we want to explore critically the lands of its origins,
the limits of its imagination, and the challenges of experiencing
wider space. Bodies, ideas, and words travel across borders, negotiate
restricted space and resistance, and become transformed as they
journey. How do notions of disability, Disability Studies, and
disability culture shift in these travels? Who participates in these
travels and who is denied entrance? How is space produced, enacted,
and lived in by disabled people? How are local life worlds configured
in space? What is at stake in seeing ourselves as citizens of a more
complex world in which multiple, simultaneous identities are engaged
in transit and dialogue?
New York, this city of immigrants, is the staging ground for the 2008
SDS conference. Thus, many cherished American ideas are up for grabs:
melting pots and assimilation, the energy of new beginnings, the
emergence of undergrounds and renaissances, beliefs in rugged
individualism and transnational capitalism, mechanisms of control and
security, and architectures of access. As we imagine disability and
disability studies in this iconic location, we ask, What are our Ellis
Islands, our Statues of Liberty, our Grand Central Stations, our
Stonewalls? Where are our Christopher Streets, our Broadways, our
Greenwich Villages?
How might New York City, a site both global and local, guide our
understandings of disability and Disability Studies from international
and transnational perspectives? How might such multiple locations in
turn illuminate, enrich, and challenge disability experiences and
Disability Studies within the United States? What are the assumptions
at work in casting New York as a cosmopolitan city, and to what
effect? What does it mean to imagine cosmopolitanism?evoking the city
without borders, people as citizens of the world?from disability
perspectives? How might notions of the city, cosmopolitanism, and the
urban produce Disability Studies scholarship that speaks to applied
disciplines and theoretical examinations of identity, citizenship,
space, and authenticity?
We invite proposals from any field that examine the ways in which
disability and urban issues intersect; engage the mobility of metaphor
and the refiguration of space; and/or explore the ways in which
Disability Studies shifts and translates in application to specific
sites and communities. Potential topics include:
? Public Health
? Violence, War, and Terror
? Mobility and Metaphor
? Housing, Home, and Homelessness
? Access and Spatiality
? Immigration and Translation
? Education
? Globalization and Transnational Critique
? Artistic Practices, Cultural Production, and Crip Culture
? History and Memory
? Categorization and Citizenship
? Public Policy in the Global City
? Bodies and Borders
? Surveillance and Security, Visibility and Invisibility
? Activist Communities, Strategies, and Identities
? Architectural Mappings and Geographical Textures
? Pollution, Garbage, and Environmental Devastation
SDS invites activists, artists, and scholars to submit proposals for
all work in progress in Disability Studies. We welcome
interdisciplinary proposals that bring together scholars in different
fields or using different methodologies, embodying the kinds of
translation and movement evoked in this year?s theme. Work can be
submitted in a variety of formats, including workshops, paper
presentations, poster sessions, performances, video/DVD recordings,
etc. For the 2008 conference, we also would like to introduce new
seminar slots for the discussion of shared readings, pre-circulated
papers, or other focused topics.
Accessibility in presentations is central to the philosophy of SDS.
Presenters should explore ways to make physical, sensory, and
intellectual access a fundamental part of their presentation. All
presenters are required to, at minimum, provide e-text versions of
papers in advance of the conference (for open captioning), large-print
hard copies (18 point font or larger) of all handouts, hard copies or
outlines of their talks in 12 point and 18 point fonts, audio
description of visual images, charts, and video/DVDs, and open or
closed captioning of films and video clips. Presentations should also
be planned so that their delivery will accommodate open-captioning and
ASL translation. In order to facilitate ASL interpretation and open
captioning, drafts of accepted presentations will be due by 1 May
2008. If you have questions about making your presentation accessible,
please contact Alison Kafer at kafera@southwestern.edu or Petra
Kuppers at petra@umich.edu. Please note: English and ASL are the two
main languages in use at SDS; if you have other language needs, please
indicate such on your proposal and we will try to assist you in
obtaining accommodations.
For details on submission, please visit the SDS website
www.disstudies.org. Questions about the conference program or
submission process should be directed to Alison Kafer at
kafera@southwestern.edu or Petra Kuppers at petra@umich.edu.
