CFP: Canadian Disability Studies Association, 6th Annual Conference

Capital D: Disability as Nation, Ground, Territory

May 25-26, 2009

Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Deadline: December 1, 2008

Papers, panels, workshops, roundtables, performances, posters and other presentations, addressing the grounds—academic disciplines, reasoning, frontiers, cultures, sites—of understanding and advancing of disability studies in Canada and internationally:

• What has been and is now the status of the Canadian citizen with Disability?

• How may Canada provide ground for a unique concept of disability, both individual and cultural?

• How may Disability provide ground for a unique concept of Canada as nation?

• Do academic territories, including methods of discipline, capitalise ideas of Disability, for better or worse?

• What are the grounds for the establishment of disability studies programs and departments across Canada?

• Does Canada’s multiculturalism permit space for Disability culture, individually, socially, or politically?

• How do physical sites—bodies, buildings, environments—create grounds and territories of Disability?

The Proposal Submission Form can be downloaded at

http://www.cdsa-acei.ca/conference.html 

 

Families and Memory — Free Public Symposium

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A Free Public Symposium on Eugenics and Family Life:
Past, Present & Future
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Friday, October 24, 2008, 8:30 am – 4:00pm
Edmonton Public Library, Stanley Milner Branch (Downtown)

This FREE PUBLIC SYMPOSIUM will centre on the stories and experiences of survivors of sterilization, institutionalization, and other aspects of our social structure that have excluded persons with real or perceived disabilities from family life

Planning on attending? Enrollment is limited! Please tell us!

Visit http://www.whatsorts.net and register today
(Register Here)

Get more details on the day beneath the fold.

The personal tragedy theory of disability, Mike Oliver, and the social model

In 1976, a group of activists known as the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS), introduced a set of terms intended to counter medicalized definitions of disability.  While the medicalized definitions previously articulated were ultimately reducible to individual pathology, the UPIAS definitions locate the “causes” of disability within society and social organization. The UPIAS defined disability in this way:

Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society. To understand this it is necessary to grasp the distinction between the physical impairment and the social situation, called ‘disability,’ of people with such impairment. Thus, we define impairment as lacking part of or all of a limb, or having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body; and disability as the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities. Physical disability is therefore a particular form of social oppression.