Here We Are! 

Disabilities and Visibilities through the ages

a special session at:

Deadline: Wednesday, 1. March 2006

(Note: The submission deadline for abstracts has been extended)

This is an open invitation for papers for a subconference entirely dedicated to cultural responses to disabilities across a wide range of perspectives during the major conference "Testimonial Texts, Stories, Lives and Memories" to be held at the National University of Pedagogy (UPN - Universidad Pedagógica Nacional) in Mexico City between June 1st and June 5th, 2006. The session which has been proposed by professor Sandra Oliver at the UPN,  aims at bringing together people working in all relevant disciplines, activists, professionals, academics and promoting innovative multidisciplinary and multicultural exchange and dialogue.

The conference will focus on a number of core themes: Papers are welcomed on virtually all topics and themes, independently of time, period and space, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives. Also papers of comparative phenomena are welcome.

Among the themes of interest are the following:

• Disabilities and Cultural Texts: Power and Representation. Representations of Disabilities in art, movies, music, poetry, religion and literature. How are testimonial narratives mediated and represented?

• Silences and taboos in discourses on disabilities.

• Aesthetic responses to disabilities. Rituals, customs, and fetishism.

• Cultural practices and disabilities

• Disabilities and the collective and individual identities: Race, Class, Gender etc

• Disabilities and Politics, Lobbying and Activism: Power, Representation and Activism. Constructions and reconstructions of disabilities in political and faith and ideology based discourse, legal issues and policy making throughout the world. Who has the authority to speak and who is silenced?

• Disabilities and theory: Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, Religious Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology, Literary Studies and all related disciplines. How do we theorize and analyze experiences and the meaning of a disability?

• The 'significance' of disabilities for individuals and communities; the cultural factors influencing our perceptions of disabilities

• Disabilities and psychosocial affects and effects. Cultures of silence.

• Indigenous knowledge and responses to disabilities

• Stories and Histories about disabilites

• Disabilities and Oral History

Interdisciplinary perspectives are especially welcomed since all these topics in themselves stretch across several disciplines: history, linguistics, psychology, political sciences, pedagogy, ethnology, anthropology, sociology...

500 word abstracts should be submitted by e-mail to the organising comitee in English, Castillian, German or French by 15th of February 2006. The conference languages will be English and Castillian.

Address: info@enkidumagazine.com 

Interpretations of the conference theme ranging from the predictable to the surprising are encouraged.

Papers should be of approximately 30 minutes duration (circa 8 - 10 pages). Other forms of presentation, for instance workshops, panel debates and poster sessions will be considered on request.

Graduate and postgraduate students are encouraged to attend and present papers.

Abstracts are to be submitted by the 15th of February 2006 to info@enkidumagazine.com, along with the presenter’s name, address, telephone, email, and institutional affiliation. All correspondence for this conference will be conducted via email.

For further information, please contact the organising comitee at: liowlb@enkidumagazine.com