Global Disability

In conjunction with Disability Acceptance Week at the University of Virginia

All events free and open to the public

I. Film Screening (Thursday, October 23, 7:00pm)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Part of the UHI Global Film Series
Thursday, October 23, 7:00pm
Nau auditorium

Post-film discussion co-led by IHGC and the French Department

Accessibility: Nau auditorium is wheelchair accessible. The film is in French, subtitled in English, and the ensuing discussion will be interpreted into American Sign Language. Parking is available on Lot K2 off of Brandon Avenue. It is free in the evening.

II. Key Note Address (Friday, October 24, 2:00 pm)

Robert McRuer, “Cripping Austerity: Disability, Globalization, and Culture”

Minor Auditorium

Speaker bio: Robert McRuer is Professor of English at George Washington University.He is the author of Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities (1997), Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (2006) , and countless articles. He is now completing a book that considers locations of disability within contemporary political economies and globalization.

Talk blurb : Theorists of neoliberalism, from David Harvey to Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, have placed dispossession at the center of their analyses of the workings of contemporary global capitalism and of a global austerity politics. Disability, however, has not figured centrally into these analyses. Even as Kevin Floyd gives David Wojnarowicz (a frequently-homeless artist and writer who died from complications due to HIV/AIDS in 1992) pride-of-place in his theorization of “the violence of neoliberalism” in The Reification of Desire: Toward a Queer Marxism, disability is displaced from consideration—displaced, arguably, by queerness, as Floyd provides a textured argument about the ways in which queerness both fuels and impedes neoliberalism. Attending in his own presentation to what he will term “crip displacements,” McRuer examines Livia Radwanski’s photos of the redevelopment of a Mexico City neighborhood (and the displacement of poor people living in the neighborhood) to trace how disability haunts theories of neoliberal dispossession and is central to a global austerity politics.

III. Panel by UVA faculty and students (Friday, October 24, 3:00 pm)

Minor Auditorium

Global Disability (Michael Levenson, English, presiding)

Epistemic Injustice and Disability Pride, Elizabeth Barnes, Philosophy
Disability and Poetry of the First World War, Sarah Rose Cole, English and Echols Scholars Program
Ethnic Minority Students in Special Education around the World, Stanley C. Trent, Curry School of Education
Destigmatizing Disability in Developing Countries, Emily Nemec, 4th year, Biomedical Engineering; Lauren Baetsen, 4th year, Biomedical Engineering; Amanda Halacy, 2nd year, College of Arts and Sciences

4:00-5:00 Closing reception, Minor Auditorium Lobby

Accessibility: Minor auditorium is wheelchair accessible. All events will be interpreted into ASL. Hourly parking is available in the Central Grounds Parking Garage. For additional accommodations requests, please contact Becky Marshall at 434-243-5180 or sdac [at] virginia.edu by October 17.

For information on accessible routes to both the film and the symposium, click here.