Conference: Before Depression (19-21 June)

[Image description: A blue background fades to white, with a grey spiral around a torn bit of dictionary with the words "Melacholy. adj." and "1. Gloomy; dismal" legible, and the title "Before Depression, 1660-1800" beneath that in blue]

This conference program titled "Before Depression: The Representation and Culture of Depression in Britain and Europe, 1660-1800," caught my attention today--the conference itself is just part of a three-year project that also includes an ongoing lecture series, planned publications and an exhibit this summer of visual representations of depression in the 18th century. Too bad for me it's all happening at the University of Northumbria and the University of Sutherland--but good for any of you who happen to be in that neighborhood. If you attend any component of this project, I'd love to hear more about it.

Next Week in London: Journeys into Madness, 1850-1930

From the H-Net Announcements digest:

Journeys Into Madness: The Representation of Mental Illness in the Arts and Sciences , 1850-1930

The conference Journeys into Madness: Representing Mental Illness in the Arts and Sciences, 1850-1930 will take place at the Wellcome Collection Conference Centre, London, on 11 and 12 October 2007. This conference has been supported by the University of Plymouth, the Wellcome Trust and the British Academy. To book your place, please contact Gemma Blackshaw. Payment can be sent electronically or by post.

The program includes papers on "male hysteria," the rest cure, asylum photography, German psychiatry, patients' writings, farm work, art brut, avant-garde film, asylum art, trauma... check it out. Even when I can't possibly attend, I love looking at conference programs, seeing who's doing what...

Conference: When the Soldiers Return

The conference ‘When the Soldiers Return’ will be held in Australia at the University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, 28-30 November 2007. This conference will bring together scholars investigating the legacy of war, its effects on the broader society and culture, and the central role returned soldiers play in these processes.

Check out just some of the papers on the program that deal with disability (and there are surely others, but these titles stuck out for me):

Sandy McFarlane and Keith Horsley, "Florence Nightingale: A Sufferer of a Post-Deployment Syndrome"

Margaret Goldswain, "The War-Damaged Soldier in Australia after the Great War"

Melanie Oppenheimer, "'Fated to a life of suffering': Graythwaite, the Australian Red Cross, and Returned Soldiers, 1916-1939"

Keith Horsley and Sandy McFarlane, "Post-Deployment Syndromes Following Wars in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries"

Kristy Muir, "'There were no ticker tape parades for us': Homecomings of Veterans with Mental Health Problems"

Jim Porteous, "Rehabilitation of Injured or Ill Australian Defence Force Members"

Jen Hawksley, "Histories from the Asylum: 'The Unknown Patient'"

Kerry Neale, "'Without the Faces of Men': The Return of Facially Disfigured Australian Veterans from the Great War"

Marina Larsson, "'The Part We Do Not See': Disabled Australian Soldiers and Family Caregiving after World War I"

Stephen Clarke, "The Long Shadow of War: The New Zealand Experience of 'Burnt-Out Diggers' during the 1920s and 1930s"

Curious to learn more about any of these projects? The program (linked above) includes abstracts for all of them.

Illustration above: a stamp that promotes Esperanto as a way to end war, with a simple illustration in green of a uniformed man on crutches; from the 1920s, I think? (Lost the cite. Bad historian.)

CFP: Disability History: Theory and Practice

[Straight from H-Disability; links added by me]

Disability History: Theory and Practice

San Francisco State University's Institute on Disability, the Disability History Association, and the Disability History Group of the United Kingdom invite submissions for papers to be given at a conference at San Francisco State University, 31 July-3 August 2008.

During the past two decades, research, teaching, and scholarly publication on the history of disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon has drawn increasing attention. The goal of this conference is to assess the state of the field. It will examine the theory and practice of disability history. And it will explore theoretical and substantive, methodological and practical strategies to promote the continued development and intellectual coherence of this field.

We invite proposals for papers on any aspect or stream of disability history. For example:

· Cultural representations.

· The histories of blind people; people with cognitive/developmental disabilities; deaf and hard-of-hearing people; people with physical or emotional disabilities.

· Any historical era.

· Any culture, society, or geographical locale.

· Ideologies and the history of ideas.

· Institutions, professions, and programs that historically have affected people with disabilities.

· Public laws and policies: civil/human rights, eugenic, rehabilitative, international.

· Social and political movements.

While this call is open-ended as to subject matter, we seek in particular historical case studies that can open up discussion of broader issues. We invite papers that use presenters' current research to consider how they approach the history of disability. What theoretical concepts inform their interpretations? What analytical and methodological tools have they found most useful? How does their work benefit from or contribute to other fields of historical inquiry, such as social history, political history, the histories of class, economic systems, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and so forth. If the work focuses on a specific stream of disability history, such as the history of blind people or the history of public policies regarding disabled veterans, what are its connections to and implications for other streams of disability history? How does their work draw upon the more general field of disability studies and what are its implications for disability studies?

Commentors will be asked to address these sorts of questions and to facilitate discussion of them in both breakout and plenary sessions.

We welcome proposals from scholars of every rank and status from academically based senior faculty to graduate students, as well as public historians, archivists, and other scholars.

Proposals for papers should include a title and be no longer than 300 words. Depending on the number of papers accepted, presenters will have 15-20 minutes. A curriculum vitae of no more than three US letter-sized pages must accompany the proposal.

Proposals may be submitted electronically via e-mail or fax or sent in hard copy through the postal system. Mailed proposals must include five copies of both the paper proposal and the curriculum vitae. We encourage electronic submissions to expedite decision-making and planning for both the conference organizers and would-be presenters.

The deadline for proposals submitted electronically via e-mail or fax is November 1, 2007. Proposers will be notified by December 1, 2007. Please send proposals electronically to:

Paul K. Longmore
Professor of History and
Director, Institute on Disability
San Francisco State University
longmore@sfsu.edu or
fax: 415-338-7539

San Francisco State offers a range of lodging plans that will accommodate both individuals and families. Some of them are economical and affordable for graduate students.

If you have questions, please e-mail Professor Longmore at longmore@sfsu.edu.

SDS, Day 3--short report

I had to depart the conference after lunch on Day 3, so I was only able to attend one panel--but it was a good one. If I had missed my flight to see David Linton's talk and eat mango cheesecake, it would have been absolutely worth it.

Linton's talk was about the use of "handicap"/sickness/cure language in Kotex advertisements of the 1920s--he had the room (which was spilling into the hallway) gasping and exclaiming with his visuals, many of them found at Duke University Archive's wondrous Ad*Access site (part of the Digital Scriptorium). At left, one of his examples: "A Great Hygienic Handicap that Your Daughter will be Spared," reads the headline on this 1926 ad, illustrated by a drawing of two seated women (presumably mother and daughter), slim and in stylish dress, clasping hands as if they're having an important talk ("the talk," as Linton put it). The small-print text extols how "Like most things, woman's greatest hygienic handicap has yielded to modern scientific attainment."

Linton had the deadpan vocal delivery of a presenter on This American Life, too, where lighter hilarity wouldn't have served the topic--after all, these aren't just quaint old advertisements, if you remember what terms like "hygiene" and "modern scientific attainment" were also about in 1920s America, in the heyday of eugenics and Americanization. (Linton is also known, on excellent authority, as "the funkiest man on skates," a claim that nobody could challenge after Friday night's dance--and he wasn't even wearing skates at the time.)

Checking in from SDS, Day 2

Hello from the lobby of the Sea-Tac Hilton, on day 2 of the 20th anniversary meeting of the Society for Disability Studies. The session I mentioned heading to last entry turned out to be a Deaf history panel, and it was really great to see a set of young scholars (Sara Robinson, Lindsey Parker, and Elizabeth Bush) digging into some issues of community, age, gender, space, and identity in contexts like a "home for the elderly and infirm deaf" in the mid-20th century, or among the first women to graduate from Gallaudet, or in national Deaf empowerment organizations (where the women were, initially, barred from membership, but more than welcome to form fund-raising auxiliaries). And as if those papers weren't enough, Susan Burch gave a fourth presentation about her soon-to-be-published work on Junius Wilson--a life story that complicates a lot of the givens about D/deaf cultural history. So that was cool.

This morning I made it to the plenary, on "The Future of Disability Arts." Very disappointed to find that a favorite dancer-blogger couldn't make it as scheduled, but her paper was still presented, and very cool. Petra Kuppers ended her portion of the program on a slide that read, "We do not need positive images. We need depth, and heft, and presence." Right on. Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren and Jim Ferris were the other presenters--I'm not going to quote you some of the stronger language in Ferris' manifesto, but it was all arresting and powerful.

Had some local friends to hang out with this afternoon, but soon I'll be covering the Disability History Association booth at the poster session and reception. Again, sorry no links, I'm really just tapping this in on the run. I'll add them in later, as opportunity permits.

Quick check in from SDS, Day 1

So I'm in the lobby at the airport Hilton in Seattle, catching a few minutes of internet access to check in from the 20th meeting of the Society for Disability Studies, which started today and runs through Saturday night. I gave my presentation this morning (on a panel about "global disability," which was a stretch for this US historian, but I think it turned out fine). Next stop was a fine panel of philosophers speaking on personhood, dignity, and justice for people with "severe mental retardation" (and they were careful to assure us that they understood the problems with the term and the diagnosis, but that they would be using it in part to confront all that). I'm usually wary of philosophy panels (just don't have a theory brain, myself)--but Licia Carlson, Sophia Wong, and Anna Stubblefield all gave talks that were engaging and very grounded. After lunch, I took a bus over to the University of Washington campus to see a performance by the wondrous collaborative effort that is the Anarcha Project--I didn't realize I'd be seeing the culmination of the last of their workshops in this format, so that was bittersweet, but very worthwhile.

Now I'm waiting for the 5:15 sessions to start--I'm planning to attend the one titled "'Minority Identities Under Construction': Intersections of Gender, Disability, and the Public Sphere." More tomorrow!

(And I'll add in some links for this entry when I get a chance.)

Children, Disability and Community Care, 1850-Present

I should add a label for posts: "lectures and conferences I wish I could attend." This would be another one (edited from an announcement on H-Education):

CHILDREN, DISABILITY, and COMMUNITY CARE FROM 1850 to the PRESENT DAY
24-25 October 2007, Sketty Hall, Swansea
A multi-disciplinary conference sponsored by the Society for the Social History of Medicine

Community care has become an increasingly important topic for social policy and historical research. While recent work has stressed the diversity of experience, the variety of different groups involved, the long antecedents of the policy and its contested meanings, there is arguably still too much emphasis on the closure of long-stay mental health and learning disability facilities. This conference seeks to:

• Locate services for children within debates about institutional and community care (framed by the adult experience) over a much longer time-frame.
  
• Extend analysis to a range of physical and sensory disabilities alongside, and in comparison to, provision for children with mental health problems and/or learning difficulties.
  
• Contrast evolving institutional and community-based services for children with disabilities with statutory and voluntary sector provision for children in care because of family breakdown and/or childhood delinquency.
• Re-examine and integrate the now extensive literature on infanticide, child abuse and "mercy" killings, in relation to childhood disability issues.
• Evaluate midwifery and obstetric services, including the development of pre-natal screening and special care for premature babies.
• Assess the role the medical profession played in the diagnosis of childhood disability and the control of specialist services. Here special attention will be paid to the relationship between knowledge and practice.
• Develop an understanding of the relationship between knowledge and practice for nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists.
• Emphasise the role community-based services play in leading people into, as well as out of, residential care.
• Draw together ideas about children in need to link efforts to maximise the opportunities available to children disadvantaged by poverty and/or disability, through an evaluation of the SureStart scheme.
• Acknowledge the contribution of the voluntary sector and self-help initiatives.
• Involve researchers and practitioners from a range of disciplines.
• Develop an international dimension to this research by inviting participants from abroad.
• Develop opportunities for the publication of selected conference papers.

All inquiries about the conference should be addressed to Pamela Dale at the Center for Medical History.

AAG 2007 Geographies of Disability Symposium

Consider this your invitation to join Penny Richards, Mike Dorn and other subscribers of the GEOGABLE (Geography and Disabilities) listserv at this year’s Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting. Follow this link to learn more about the activities being organized by the AAG Disability Specialty Group for San Francisco, April 17 – 21, 2007.

Thanks to the hard work of the DSG officers, members and friends over the summer and fall of 2006, the AAG 2007 Geographies of Disability Symposium now stretches across two days - Thursday, April 19, and Friday, April 20. Do also check out the other interesting sessions we are sponsoring on Tuesday, April 17 and Wednesday, April 18. Social events for San Francisco during the conference are still in the planning stages. Why not volunteer to help us organize and publicize fun Bay Area events during the conference?

Information on registration, hotel information and how to arrange for necessary accommodations at the AAG 2007 conference information can be found on the 2007 AAG Conference Pages. Phone 202-234-1450 or email the disability coordinator Juana Ibanez with accommodation requests as soon as possible.

Marking the 100th anniversary of Alzheimer's

Untangling Selfhood: The History and Experience of Alzheimer's Disease
A Conference Marking the 100th Anniversary of Alzheimer's Disease as a Diagnostic Category

March 29-31, 2007
The Nittany Lion Inn
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania

Sponsored by the Disability Studies Program, with the support of the Gerontology Center at Penn State, the Rock Ethics Institute, and the Science, Technology and Society Program

One hundred years ago, German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer presented the case history of a 51-year-old woman with dementia named Auguste Deter that would eventually be the basis for the diagnostic label AD. This anniversary will be marked at several major international conferences by celebratory accounts of a century of scientific progress in unraveling the mysterious pathology of the disease. Although the striking photograph of Auguste Deter (shown above, right) will likely be seen often in these festivities, her actual experience and the experience of people who suffer with dementia is not likely to receive serious attention. Penn State's Conference will mark the anniversary by bringing together scholars from around the world who do research on various aspects of the history and experience of Alzheimer's disease.

In recent years, people with cognitive disorders and their advocates have challenged the idea that selfhood is destroyed by the loss of cognitive abilities. Taking the experience of people with dementia and other cognitive disorders seriously has thus opened a re-examination of current concepts and practices among clinicians, researchers and care providers, and raised new and difficult questions for biomedical ethicists and policymakers. Taking this experience seriously has also troubled the boundary between cognitive disorders and normality, opening up new possibilities for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who work on questions of memory, selfhood, and culture.

The 100th Anniversary of what has become perhaps the most prominent of cognitive disorders offers an opportunity to bring together scholars from around the world who are working on various aspects of the experience of dementia and other severe cognitive disorders, but who seldom have an opportunity to share their ideas and insights across the disciplinary boundaries that have divided the modern university.

For more information about participants, topics, and reservations, check the website for the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State, or contact Dr. Jesse Ballenger .

[From the website announcement, as posted to DS-Hum. Links added.--PLR]

CFP: Disability in Early Medieval Europe

DISEASE, DISABILITY AND MEDICINE IN EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, AD 400-1200
Concepts of Health and the Healthy Body

School of English Studies
University of Nottingham
6-7 July 2007
Call for papers

The second conference on Disease, Disability and Medicine in Early Medieval Europe, AD 400-1200 will focus on questions of what constitutes a healthy body in the medieval world, health care, cure and the language of care. The meeting aims to be a forum for scholars working on the topic in a variety of disciplines and regions of Northern Europe, including all aspects of disease, disability and medicine. The conference aims foster interdisciplinary approaches and we invite contributions from archaeology, palaeopathology, history of medicine, as well as history of religion, philosophy, linguistic and historical sciences. Please send abstracts (no more than 300 words) to Dr Christina Lee by 28 February 2007.

To get some ideas of what kind of work is presented at these conferences, see the program from last year's conference on Disability in Medieval Europe.

[Image above: A medieval depiction of removing a cataract; found here.]

2007: The Year Ahead in Disability Studies

What's on the horizon in this new year? I've been taking a surf around to find some highlights--get your calendars and book orders ready:

CONFERENCES:
April 7-9
7th Annual Disability Studies in Education Conference
Chicago

April 11-13
150 Years on Kendall Green: Celebrating Deaf History and Gallaudet
Washington DC

May 31-June 2
20th Annual Society for Disability Studies Conference
Seattle

PUBLICATIONS:
Douglas Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, Jean Lindquist Bergey, Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (Gallaudet University Press 2007).

Brenda Brueggemann and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, eds., Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook (Bedford St. Martins 2007).

Hilary Cooper, Divided Portraits: Identity and Disability (Umbrage 2007).

Benedicte Ingstad and Susan Reynolds Whyte, eds. Disability in Local and Global Worlds (University of California Press 2007).

Paul Jacobs, Neither-Nor: A Young Australian's Experience with Deafness (Gallaudet University Press 2007).

Petra Kuppers, The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Arts (University of Minnesota Press 2007).

Raymond Luczak, ed. When I am Dead: The Writings of George M. Teegarden (Gallaudet University Press 2007, part of the Gallaudet Classics in Deaf Studies series).

Martin F. Norden, ed. The Changing Face of Evil in Film and Television (Editions Rodopi 2007).

Carol Poore, Disability in Twentieth-Century German Culture (University of Michigan Press 2007).

Ato Quayson, Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (Columbia University Press 2007).

Carol Thomas, Sociologies of Disability and Illness: Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology (Palgrave MacMillan 2007).

Tanya Titchkosky, Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment (University of Toronto Press 2007).

Watermeyer, Brian, and Leslie Swartz, eds. Disability and Social Change: A South African Agenda (Human Sciences Research Council 2007).

Weber, Mark C. Disability Harassment (NYU Press 2007).

NEW JOURNALS:
Journal of Literary Disability
Disability Studies and Special Education

Conference for Law Students with Disabilities, January 27 - 28, 2007 at American University in Washington, D.C.

The American Bar Association's (ABA) Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities' Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (IRR), along with the ABA's Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Lawand the ABA's Law Student Division, will be sponsoring a planning conference for a new national student organization that will encourage those with disabilities to pursue careers in the legal profession as well as assist them in the admissions process, throughout their tenure in law school, and in securing employment after graduation. Attendance at the conference is free and financial assistance for travel expenses is available on a first-come first-serve basis. The conference is being held at American University's Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C.

For more information, contact IRR at (202) 662-1030 or download the flier [PDF].

November 10: Disability Rights Symposium at Penn

[An announcement posted on H-Disability; links and image added.--plr]

"The Haves and the Have Nots: An Assessment of Disability in the Middle East"
on Friday, November 10, at 9:30am, featuring:

Liat Ben Moshe, Syracuse University: "Disability at War in Israel: A Cautionary Tale on Activism and Resistance"

Sumi Colligan, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts: "Navigating Paternalistic State and Neo-Liberal Discourses and Practices: The Complexities of Agency for Disability Rights Activists in Israel"

Hila Rimon Greenspan: "The Rise of the Disability Rights Movement in Israel"

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, University of Pennsylvania: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Historical Overview of Disability in Modern Iran"

Professor Robert Vitalis of the University of Pennsylvania will serve as the discussant.

This symposium will take place in College Hall, Room 205. SPACE IS LIMITED!
For information and to RSVP contact Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet.

Co-sponsored by The Middle East Center and the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at Penn's School of Nursing

Disability history at the Berks

I spent the weekend at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, which happens every three years and happened about an hour's drive from me this go-round, at Scripps College in Claremont CA. Disability historians interested in gender were there in good numbers: at one table for the Saturday night barbecue, we had Susan Burch, Donna Ryan, Janice Brockley, Heather Munro Prescott, Cathy Kudlick, Martha Stoddard Holmes, Wendy Kline, and myself (apologies if I'm forgetting anyone). Didn't see any of their presentations (those who gave them--Susan Burch's panel was opposite the one I was chairing, for one excuse), but the talk around the lunch and dinner tables was invigorating.

"Art Beyond Sight"

This is a bit ahead of the game, but it sounds worth planning for: There will be a conference jointly organized by Art Education for the Blind, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum Access Consortium, called "Art Beyond Sight: Multi-Modal Approaches to Learning," that sounds more interesting than the jargon in the second half of the title. It's scheduled for Friday October 14 and Saturday October 15; the Friday events happen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and feature among the presenters Rebecca McGinnis and Deborah Jaffe (the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Hannah Goodwin (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), Georgina Kleege (University of California at Berkeley and author of Sight Unseen), Dr. Alvaro Pascuale-Leone (Harvard Medical Center), and David Rose (Harvard Medical School of Education and CAST). The Saturday morning events take place at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and feature two panel discussions chaired by Paula Terry (Director, Office of AccessAbility, National Endowment for the Arts), and Francesca Rosenberg (Museum of Modern Art). Saturday afternoon events will be more panel discussions, held at the American Folk Art Museum. There will also be dinner and breakfast gatherings for discussion. If you email these folks (try editor-at-large@artbeyondsight.org ) with "October conference" in the subject line, they'll send you registration information and other details.