DEAD LINE FOR APPLICATIONS: October 3, 2012
Applications should be sent to InterGender Managing Director Dr Pia Laskar (Email: Pia.Laskar@liu.se)
MAXIMUM NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 20
ORGANIZED BY
Unit of Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, in collaboration with InterGender, Sweden.
COURSE COORDINATORS:
Senior Lecturer Pia Laskar, InterGender Managing Director and Professor Nina Lykke, Director of InterGender, Linköping University.
Teachers:
Margrit Shildrick, Professor, Tema Genus, Linköping University, Sweden
Robert McRuer, Professor, English Department, George Washington University, USA
Jens Rydström, Professor, Gender Studies, Lund University, Sweden.
Course DESCRIPTION:
In recent years Critical Disability Studies has emerged as one of the most exciting areas of exploration in the continuing development of theories of embodiment, raising urgent issues of subjectivity, sexualities, and sexual difference to name just a few. After years of neglect, even disavowal, the question of anomalous embodiment and sexuality is at the heart of emergent scholarship forcing a reconsideration of the operative paradigms well beyond the arena of disability. Just as feminism, postcolonial studies and queer theory have all in turn offered a radical challenge to the existing conventions, so Critical Disability Studies is now the locus to watch for anyone concerned with interdisciplinary cutting edge theory. Taking a broadly postmodernist perspective, the course will draw on philosophy, literature, history, the social sciences, feminist theory and much more to pull together new ways of thinking about the body in all its forms.
Over the 3 days of intensive exploration, analysis and discussion, different aspects of the problematic will be presented by each of the course leaders. The strand called Crip/Queer Theory in a Moment of Danger will be lead by Robert McRuer (George Washington University) who will give an overview some of the ways in which queer theory and disability studies have converged over the past few decades to generate crip theory. We will consider some of the complex and contradictory ways in which “crip” has both functioned and materialized in relation to bodies and desires. The seminar will ask how queer/crip theory has emerged within and in resistance to neoliberal capitalism; and how “excessive” bodies and desires are positioned to critique the global spread of austerity politics? Can crip/queer theory navigate the tensions between disability rights (often grounded in identity politics and on appeals to the nation-state) and emergent transnational movements for disability justice? What types of cultural formations or representations have been most important for generating crip/queer theory, and how do they escape the dangers of ossification, cooptation, commodification?
Jens Rydström (Lund University) will focus on Dis-Junctures: Disability and sexuality in Denmark and Sweden in a historical context. His strand will cover the differences in the radical Danish and Swedish disability movements in the 1970s which shared the same Marxist perspective, but differed in their discussion of sexuality, with only the Danish movement using the specific experiences from the Queer movement to understand sexual oppression. Questions that will be raised are whether Sweden's contemporary reluctance to deal with disabled people's sexuality is connected to the liberal traditions of its mainstream disability movement, and in what ways a radicalised Queer movement can influence the general discourse on sexuality and disability.
The 3rd strand, Queer Pleasures in a Deleuzian Mode, led by Margrit Shildrick (Linkoping University), will explore the reconfiguring of pleasure that the body out of order demands. Different forms of sexuality are just the first step in radically contesting existing explanatory models – sexuality studies, feminism, disability studies, Foucault – before moving into a Deleuzian take on desire and its relation to embodiment. How do the notions of assemblage, rhizomes, the body without organs, deterriorialisation give us new tools to challenge the disavowal of desire in relation to anomalous bodies? What are the dangers that follow – political and social - from willingly evacuating the position of the subject? How can those with substantive disabilities revalue the specificities of singular lives beyond a framework of rights and identity politics? We will explore Deleuzian inspired alternatives with scant regard for the canon but in the free-ranging spirit of Deleuze himself.
Taken together, the 3 approaches provide a rich and varied insight into the state of critical disability scholarship that has implications for work in many related areas of study, not least gender studies which shares its interdisciplinary approach. Guided by the 3 leaders, students will be asked to link their own research projects to the themes of the course and to give presentations that can be discussed in the integral workshops.
We want the course to be fully inclusive so please let us know on application of any accessibility issues or requirements.
Readings and schedule
ROBERT MCRUER
Set Texts (224 pages total [not counting Schweik article])
“Epilogue: Specters of Disability” in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York: NYU, 2006): 199-209.
“Disability Nationalism in Crip Times,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4.2 (2010): 163-178.
and Nicole Markotić, “Leading with Your Head: On the Borders of Disability, Sexuality, and the Nation,” in Sex and Disability, ed. McRuer and Anna Mollow (Durham: Duke UP, 2012): 165-182.
Additional texts:
Berlant, Lauren, “Cruel Optimism,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham: Duke UP, 2010): 93-117.
Castiglia, Christopher and Chistopher Reed, “Remembering a New Queer Politics: Ideals in the Aftermath of Identity,” in If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012): 175-215.
Chen, Mel Y, “Lead’s Racial Mattering,” in Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham: Duke UP, 2012): 159-188.
Davidson, Michael, “Universal Design: The Work of Disability in an Age of Globalization,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 3rd ed., ed. Lennard Davis (New York: Routledge, 1997): 133-146.
Duggan, Lisa, “Downsizing Democracy,” in The Twilight of Equality (Boston: Beacon, 2003): 1-21.
Erevelles, Nirmala, “Embodied Antinomies: Feminist Disability Studies Meets Third World Feminism,” in Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic (New York: Palgrave, 2011): 121-146
Halberstam, Judith, “The Queer Art of Failure,” in The Queer Art of Failure (Duke: Durham, 2011): 87-121.
Schweik, Susan, “Kicked to the Curb: Ugly Laws Then and Now,” Harvard Law Review (forthcoming).
JENS RYDSTRÖM
Set texts (243 pages total)
Crip Theory in Scandinavia (86 pages)
Apelmo, Elisabet (2012), ”Crip heroes and social change”, lambda nordica, Vol. 17, Nos. 1–2, pp. 27–52. [26 pp.]
Rice, James G. (2012) ”’I’m not enough of a loser’: A crip interpretation of disability and charity in Iceland”, lambda nordica, Vol. 17, Nos. 1–2, pp 121–143. [23 pp.]
Rydström, Jens (2012) ”Introduction: crip theory in Scandinavia” lambda nordica, Vol. 17, Nos. 1–2, pp. 9–20 [12 pp.]
Vaahtera, Elina (2012) ”Compulsory able-bodiedness and the stigmatised forms of nondisability”, lambda nordica, Vol 17, Nos. 1–2, pp. 77–101. [25 pp.]
The Social Model / Historical Materialism (79 pages)
Barnes, Colin (1999) ”Disability Studies: new or not so new directions?”, Disability & Society, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 577–580. [4 pp.]
Conejo, Miriam Arenas (2011) “Disabled women and transnational feminisms: Shifting boundaries and frontiers”, Disability & Society, Vol. 26, No. 5, pp. 597–609. [13 pp.]
Gleeson, B. J. (1997) ”Disability Studies: a historical materialist View”, Disability & Society, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 179–202. [24 pp.]
Linton, Simi (1998) ”Disability Studies/Not Disability Studies”, Disability & Society, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 525–540. [16 pp.]
Shakespeare, Tom, & Nicholas Watson (1997) “Defending the Social Model”, Disability & Society, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 293–300. [8 pp.]
Tregaskis, Claire (2002) “Social Model Theory: the story so far ...”, Disability & Society, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 457–470. [14 pp.]
Sexuality (78 pages)
Earle, Sarah (1999) ”Facilitated sex and the concept of sexual need: Disabled students and their personal assistants”, Disability & Society, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 309–323. [15 pp.]
Kuosmanen, Jari, & Mikaela Starke (2011) ”Identifying the invisible: The experiences of prostitution among persons with intellectual disabilities: Implications for social work” Journal of Social Work, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–18. [19 pp.]
Rogers, Chrissie (2010) ”But it’s not all about the sex: mothering, normalisation and young learning disabled people”, Disability & Society, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 63–74. [15 pp.]
Rydström, Jens (Forthcoming) ”’Can the crippled have a normal emotional life?’ Sexuality and disability in a Scandinavian historical perspective” in Don Kulick & Jens Rydström, Excessibility Guidelines: How to Facilitate and How to Impede the Sex Lives of People with Disabilities. Will be distributed. [To be distributed, 12 pp.]
Sanders Teela (2007) ”The politics of sexual citizenship: commercial sex and disability”, Disability & Society,
Vol. 22, No. 5, pp. 439–455. [17 pp.]
MARGRIT SHILDRICK
Set Texts (215 pages total)
- ‘Critical Disability Studies: rethinking the conventions for the age of postmodernity’ in Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies, ed. Nick Watson, Carol Thomas and Alan Roulstone (2012, Routledge). 30-42.
- ‘Prosthetic Performativity: Deleuzian Connections and Queer Corporealities’ in C. Nigianni (ed.) Deleuze and Queer Theory (2009 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). 115-134.
‘Queer Pleasures’, Chap. 6 (20) in Dangerous Discourses: Subjectivity, Sexuality and Disability (2009 Palgrave Macmillan)
Additional texts:
Fritsch, Kelly (2010) ‘Intimate Assemblages: Disability, Intercorporeality, And The Labour Of Attendant Care’, Critical Disability Discourse webpage; full text available at http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cdd/article/viewFile/23854/28098 14
Gibson, Barbara E. (2006) ‘Disability, connectivity and transgressing the autonomous body’, J. of Medical Humanities 27: 187-196.
Gibson, Barbara E,. Franco A. Carnevale, Gillian King (2012) “This is my way”: reimagining disability, in/dependence and interconnectedness of persons and assistive technologies’, Disability and Rehabilitation
Goodley, Dan (2009) ‘Bringing the Psyche back into Disability Studies: The Case of the Body with/out Organs’, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 3, 3: 257-272
Goodley, Dan and Roets, Griet (2008) ‘The (be)comings and goings of “developmental disabilities”: the cultural politics of impairment’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 29. 2: 239-255.
Hickey-Moody, Anna (2008) ‘Deleuze, Guattari and the Boundaries of Intellectual Disability’ in S. Gabel & S. Danforth (eds) Disability and the Politics of Education (Peter Lang Publishing) pp.353-70
Hickey-Moody, Anna and Denise Wood (2008) ‘Imagining otherwise: Deleuze, disability & Second Life’, ANZCA08 Conference, Power and Place. Wellington, July 2008. Available at: http://departments.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Colleges/College%20of%20Busin... 16
Kaul, Kate (2003) ‘Figuring Disability’, conference paper First Disability Studies Association Conference, Lancaster University, UK. Full text (13pp) available at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/disabilityconference_archive/2003/pap...
Overboe, James (1999) ‘”Difference in Itself”: Validating Disabled People’s Lived Experience’, Body & Society 5(4): 17–29. Full text available at: http://a.parsons.edu/~nesrin/thesis/research/differenceinitself.pdf
- (2009) ‘Affirming an Impersonal Life: A Different Register’, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 3, 3: 241-56.
Puar, Jasbir K. (2012) The Cost of Getting Better: Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 18, 1: 149-158.
Michael A. Rembis (2010) ‘Beyond the Binary: Rethinking the Social Model of Disabled Sexuality’, Sexuality and Disability 28: 51-60
Backup reading if you want:
Shildrick, Margrit (2009) Dangerous Discourses: Subjectivity, Sexuality and Disabilit.y Palgrave Macmillan
- (2008) ‘Deciding on death: conventions and contestations in the context of disability’, J. of Bioethical Inquiry (Special issue: ‘Disability and Bioethics’), 5 (2 & 3). 209-219
Simpson, Catherine & Matthews, Nicole (2012) ‘Dancing Us To Her Song: Enabling Embodiment and Voicing Disability in Heather Rose's Dance Me to My Song’, Australian Feminist Studies 27, 72: 139-155
STRUCTURE OF THE COURSE:
The course will include two kinds of sessions: 1) lecture-discussion-sessions on the proposed readings. Course participants are expected to have read the relevant chapters/articles before the course.
2) group sessions with presentations of students' papers, where students are given the opportunity to present their doctoral research and receive comments from teachers and co-participants.
Participants will be divided into three working groups to make individual presentations and discuss research questions from their doctoral project.
Each of the three lecturers will have responsibility for one group each. Based on the research description, each participant is asked to make a presentation of her/his research project for 10-15 minutes, followed by 30 minutes for questions and discussion. All group participants are expected to read the papers of their fellow group members and be ready to give comments.
PREPARATION:
* See reading list.
* Paper (2-5 pages describing research problems related to the PhD project of the participant) to be sent to InterGender Managing Director Pia Laskar (pia.laskar@liu.se) AT THE LATEST TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE COURSE START; remember to mark it with your name and the course name.
* All participants are expected to read the papers of their fellow group members before the course and be ready to give comments in the group sessions.
* The students’ papers and some of the other readings for the course will be available to all the participants via our intra net.
Books must be bought or borrow. More info on this will be given to registered participants.
ESSAY
* 15 pages to be handed in at the latest 3 months after the course; one copy should be sent to the teacher, who is going to evaluate it, and one to InterGender Managing Director Pia Laskar pia.laskar@liu.se. The teacher has 3 months to evaluate the essay.
* The essay should strike a balance between addressing a theme, which have been part of course (lectures, discussions, reading material), and be relevant for the PhD research of the student.
* The essay should, moreover, be considered as an exercise in doing a written presentation to an academic readership, which is not familiar with the author's PhD research. It should constitute a whole and explain relevant contexts.
ACCREDITATION AND EXAMINATION´
a) 7,5 ECTS Credits is given for active participation and a short paper, maximum 5 pages.
b) 15 ECTS Credits is given for active participation, + essay (evaluated as pass/fail). An essay should be of 10-15 pages. The selected topic shall be related to the course content and readings.
The essay is to be sent to the teacher as well as to the academic coordinator no later than 3 months after the final day of the course.
Info on admission and grants can be found here
Applications should be sent to InterGender Managing Director Dr Pia Laskar (Email: Pia.Laskar@liu.se) no later than October 3, 2012.
InterGender: Swedish-International Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies
The School is funded by The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). It is organized as a joint venture between Gender Studies Units and doctoral programmes at Linköping University (host university) and at eight other Swedish Universities: Blekinge Institute of Technology, Göteborg University, Lund University, Luleå Technical University, Stockholm University, Uppsala University, Umeå University, Örebro University and at three international partner institutions: Graduate Gender Program at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), The Finnish National Doctoral School of Women's and Gender Studies (Helsinki University, Finland) and Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Germany).