Call for papers: Society for Disability Studies conference in Philadelphia in 2010

From the Society for Disability Studies:

SDS 2010, 22nd Annual Conference Call for Proposals

Dates: June 2-5, 2010
Host: Institute on Disabilities, Temple University
Location: Howard Gittis Student Center, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Submission Forms: All proposals must use the SDS CFP submission form available at the 2010 SDS conference site
Proposal Deadline: Midnight EST, December 15, 2009

THEME: DISABILITY IN THE GEO-POLITICAL IMAGINATION

The development of global studies has increasingly called for a cross-cultural and comparative approach to questions of marginalization, stigma, diaspora and resettlement, labor and exploitation, climate change, and the world-ranging production of impairment and disability from violence, inhumane treatment, crumbling infrastructure, and environmental degradation. A significant amount of scholarship also examines new resistance cultures and the galvanization of global networks as members of diverse disability communities try to navigate productive collaborations across newly wired cybernetic systems and claim the possibilities offered by globalization. New opportunities and new problems abound around forging transnational communities, increased mobility, health and charity tourism, the implementation of universal rights, increased transparency of states and organizations, better community-based rehabilitation, and more varied work possibilities.

This year's Society for Disability Studies conference features the theme "Disability in the Geo-Political Imagination" to spur ongoing efforts in interdisciplinary analyses. Such a theme arrives at a timely moment in the wake of the signing of the United Nations Charter on the Rights of People with Disabilities by leaders in 140 nations (including, most recently and somewhat belatedly, the United States). As a result of the emergence and ratification of this convention, disability has become a more visible topic within the public sphere. Nations, perhaps including the United States, that previously undervalued disabled populations now contend with what it means to be truly inclusive. Likewise, Disability-advocacy organizations now seek to make further claims upon the state as a guarantor of rights and liberties. This SDS conference theme includes proactive responses to the critique that disabled populations, particularly those which are disproportionately poor and people of color, are ill represented, under-analyzed, and under-theorized, in the context of global studies. As the local and global may be seen as inflecting each other, so can questions of disability, race, class, and gender.

Disability studies explores the distance that exists between popular representations of disability as tragic embodiment, and politically informed disability cultures that define themselves against such devaluing views. Authors of panel and paper proposals will ideally feature new ways of conceptualizing people who experience disability as social actors connected or disconnected on a global scale. In particular, the SDS Program Committee seeks entries from those areas of inquiry that resist, revise, and re-imagine contemporary understandings of human differences and embodiment such as critical race studies, feminist/womanist studies, class-based analyses, queer studies, trans-gender studies, and other critical perspectives linked to social justice initiatives.

While all proposals and topics are welcome, this theme encourages submissions that attend to local conditions, including those in our host city of Philadelphia, within a global context and to cultures of empowerment and resistance within the complexity of global exploitation and opportunities.

Questions about the application process or other administrative matters may be directed to the SDS Executive Office at conference@disstudies.org.

Overall questions can be directed to either of the Program Committee Co-Chairs:

David Mitchell, Temple University, dmitchel@temple.edu
Devva Kasnitz, University of California, Berkeley, devva@earthlink.net

To read the full CFP, review application guidelines, or to submit a proposal, visit: http://www.disstudies.org/conference/2010/cfp.