CFP: Disability and the American Counterculture

Spotted on DS-HUM:

Special issue CFP: Disability and the American Counterculture
Guest edited by Stella Bolaki and Chris Gair

The American Counterculture has a complex relationship with disability. At
its heart is the reinvention of the term freak that serves as an early
example of empowering, though not unproblematic, appropriation of what had
previously been a derogatory term. Freak Out!, the debut album by The
Mothers of Invention—labelled a “monstrosity” by Frank Zappa—is a prime
example of the association of freakery with the forms of avant-garde
experimentation representative of one form of countercultural practice. In
addition, representations of disability and illness occur repeatedly in
countercultural work: the asylum and hospital become central tropes for
examinations of the relationship between sanity and madness in Allen
Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, while
canonical Beat/countercultural novels such as Jack Kerouac’s Desolation
Angels and Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America and movies such as
Richard Rush’s Psych-Out feature disabled characters not only to derive
rhetorical force in their critique of hegemonic culture, but also to
question core countercultural ideologies. In terms of aesthetics, William
Burroughs’ experimental “cut-up technique” has been discussed in the
context of his interest in virology and Andy Warhol’s work of trauma,
injury and violence alongside what Tobin Siebers has called “disability
aesthetics”. More recent work, such as E.L. Doctorow’s novel Homer and
Langley, the Hollywood film Forrest Gump and Simi Linton’s memoir My Body
Politic, examines the connection between disability and the counterculture
through different lenses and with various aims.

What do perspectives informed by disability studies have to offer to
typical readings of the American counterculture and its fundamental ideals
of movement (both geographical and ideological), youth and vitality? In
what ways did the American counterculture and the disability movement
approach notions of the “normal” and the “abnormal” body? Beat and
countercultural writers and artists have been criticised for their
romanticised view of other cultures and for appropriating and shedding
roles and personas from various marginalised groups at a dizzying pace. How
different was the appropriation of disability to the American
counterculture’s interest in other cultures (Eastern, African American,
Native American) and their potential for constructing a subversive
identity? What are the legacies of the American counterculture and its
various discourses and styles of liberation for contemporary disability
life writing, arts and activism? With such questions in mind, the co-
editors invite proposals on an array of topics which include (but are not
limited to) the following:

•perspectives from disability studies/theory on iconic as well as
understudied Beat texts and countercultural ideals more broadly
•challenges to “normalcy” from disability movements and the American
counterculture (comparative perspectives/debates)
•disability as theme and/or aesthetic in countercultural writing, art, film
and music or in more recent works that reference the American counterculture
•appropriation and reinvention of the term “freak” by the counterculture
•approaches to spectacle, the stare, the performative, and fashion in
American counterculture and disability cultures/arts
•disability in the sixties-era communes and communal living groups
•feminist disability studies and the counterculture
•crip perspectives on the American counterculture
•legacies of the American counterculture and countercultural ideals,
practices and styles for disability writing, arts, and activism

Discussions of specific literary and cultural texts are invited, but
preference will be given to projects that use individual texts as vehicles
to address broader cultural debates and theoretical inquiries related to
disability studies and the American counterculture. A one-page proposal and
a one-page curriculum vitae should be emailed to S.Bolaki@kent.ac.uk and
Chris.Gair@glasgow.ac.uk by the end of July 2013. Finalists will be
selected by 1st October 2013, and full drafts of articles will be due on
1st March 2014.

Lecture series: Disabilities and Abilities in the Middle Ages & the Renaissance

Starting last week, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Ohio State University is offering a series of ten free public lectures on disability in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.  I'm not in Ohio, and I'm guessing a lot of our readers aren't either, but it's still interesting to see the lecture titles (links lead to each lecture's facebook event page, for further information):

Friday, 7 September 2012
Christine Lee, Lecturer in Viking Studies, Nottingham University
"Able Bodies:  Considerations of (Dis)ability in Anglo-Saxon England"

Friday, 28 September 2012
Paul Hyams, Professor of History, Cornell University
"Serfrom without Strings:  Amartya Sen in the Middle Ages"

Friday, 12 October 2012
Julie Singer, Assistant Professor of French, Washington University in Saint Louis
"Mental Illness, Self-Violence, and Civil War"

Friday, 16 November 2012
John Lindow, Professor of Scandinavian, UC-Berkeley
"Maimed Bodies and Broken Systems in the Old Norse Imaginary"

Friday, 30 November 2012
Shigehisa Kuriyama, Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History, Harvard University
"Toward a History of Distraction"

Friday, 8 February 2013
James Clifton, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
"Blindness, Desire, and Touch in Two French Paintings"

Thursday, 21 February 2013
Michael Thomsett, Independent Scholar, Author of The Inquisition: A History
"Legal Disabilities of Inquisition Victims"

Friday, 8 March 2013
Encarnación Juárez-Almendros, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Notre Dame
"Teresa of Avila and her Neurological Condition"

Friday, 22 March 2013
Christopher Baswell, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of English, Barnard College/Columbia University
"Three Medieval Cripples:  The Performance of Authenticity"

Friday, 12 April 2013
Ian Maclean, Professor of Renaissance Studies, All Souls College, Oxford
"Renaissance Bodies and their Imperfections"

Disability Blog Carnival #84: Call is up now...

Writer in a Wheelchair is hosting the September edition of the Disability Blog Carnival.  Because Emma's been at the the Paralympics recently, the theme will be "Inspire a Generation."  Here's the call, and here are the main details:

You can submit older posts or write new ones
They need to be related to disability but don’t need to be written by disabled people
Posts need to fit the theme in someway but it’s not rigid
The deadline for posts is Sept 26th, I hope to post the carnival on 30th Sept.

Emma lists several ways to submit links--in comments at the blog, in tweets, and in emails.  Please consider joining in!