Dear all, 

Dear all,

Dear all,

For more information or assistance, please do not hesitate to contact the study group coordinators – Shruti Vaidya (shrutiv@uchicago.edu) and Sharon Seegers Marie (sharons@uchicago.edu)

Looking forward to meeting everyone soon!

Shruti and Sharon

PS- Also attached is a map of Saieh Hall. Saieh Hall is wheelchair accessible and this map provides information on access features. Please contact us for any access questions or concerns.

Stigma, liminality, and chronic pain

The UChicago Disability Studies Workshop is excited to announce our first event of Winter Quarter, co-sponsored with UChicago’s Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture!

Dr. Bess Williamson

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Accessible America:

Design and the Politics of Disability Rights

Swift Hall Common Room

Tuesday, January 15, 12:30 pm

(Please note the different time and location.)

Light lunch will be served at 12:15

In this talk, Professor Williamson will discuss her new book, Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (NYU press, 2019), and highlight how objects of design – such as architecture, public transportation, and everyday housewares – played a key role in developing an American understanding of the rights of disabled people under the law, in the consumer marketplace, and in creative personal lives.

The Swift Hall Common Room is wheelchair-accessible and located on the first floor of Swift Hall, near the accessible entrance at the southwest corner of the building, adjacent to Bond Chapel. If there are other accommodations that would make the event more accessible to you, or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email Matthew Borus (mgborus@uchicago.edu), Shruti Vaidya (shrutiv@uchicago.edu), or Nigel O’Hearn (ohearn@uchicago.edu).

The Disability Studies Workshop and the African Studies Workshop are excited to invite you to a co-sponsored workshop:

Tyler Zoanni

PhD Candidate, New York University

Department of Anthropology

Appearances of Christianity and Disability

in Uganda

With discussant Stephanie Palazzo

UChicago Dept of Comparative Human Development

Saieh Hall, Room 103

December 5th, 12:30-1:50

Light lunch will be provided

Abstract:

This paper considers how Christianity contributes to the appearance of cognitive disability in Uganda, a country with very high rates of disability and where Christian efforts provide the vast majority of disability care, housing, and advocacy. As a point of departure, I invoke Hannah Arendt’s notion of appearance as a way to thematize the importance of public display within Ugandan social life and the challenge that people with readily evident disabilities pose to Ugandan social aesthetics. The paper traces how cognitive disability disappears under the liberal logics that organize Uganda’s progressive disability laws and activism. Next, I compare the ways that Catholic and Pentecostal efforts sustain the appearance of cognitive disability, tracing their theological differences as well as their shared paternalism. My argument is quite simple: Even as Ugandan Christian paternalism in response to cognitive disability may appear deeply repugnant to a liberal vision of disability politics, it sustains a form of disability appearance that is otherwise not possible.

The article, to be read before the meeting can be accessed here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Mjvbz_byBd8jFIaTR9Jba6r_FtkdjmgT

To receive updates about future events, subscribe to the Disability Studies Workshop listserv here: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/subscribe/disstudies-reading, or check out our website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/disabilitystudies/.

All Disability Studies Workshop events are free and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted, events this quarter will be hosted in Saieh Hall, Room 103.  (Returning participants, please note the new location!) Saieh 103 wheelchair accessible, though for navigational purposes, please note that it is on the west side of the building, down a long hallway (with a somewhat uneven tiled surface) from the accessible front entrance. An overall campus map is available here, and one focused on accessible entrances and exits to Saieh Hall is here. We are committed to making the workshop accessible; if there are accommodations that would be of use to you, please contact mgborus@uchicago.edu or shrutiv@uchicago.edu.

Contact Zoe Berman (zberman@uchicago.edu), Shruti Vaidya (shrutiv@uchicago.edu), or Matthew Borus (mgborus@uchicago.edu) with any questions or concerns.

The Disability Studies Workshop is proud to present:

Chao Wang

PhD candidate, UChicago

Department of History

Reproducing Dependency: Blinded Veterans and Family Life in a Rehabilitation Camp during Wartime China, 1942-1945

Saieh Hall, Room 103

November 14th, 12:30-1:20

Light lunch will be provided. Please note the shorter-than-usual time.

Abstract: Towards the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-1945), China’s Nationalist government had established 32 rehabilitation camps in 10 provinces that housed over 70,000 military casualties. Managing this unprecedented number of wounded and disabled veterans in ways that reduced the economic burden on the wartime state became the primary goal for the national campaign to make “crippled but useful” (suican bufei) soldiers after their demobilization. Drawing from a historical sociological survey of one of the largest rehabilitation camps that housed about 500 blinded veterans and their dependents (wives, children) in Sichuan, the wartime Nationalist Great Rear Area (Dahoufang), this paper investigates how the war’s production of a sensory disability reshaped the relationship between veterans and the state. In the scheme of rehabilitation, war blindness became a corporeal asset for veterans to claim financial supports from the state as long as they followed the protocol of reconfiguring their injured body to fit the state’s demands of productivity. This included undergoing a mandatory process of training for industrial skills and written literacy, as well as participating in reclamation works in the military farms. In reality, however, the obligation of blinded veterans to support their families had driven them to engage in a variety of nonproductive and illicit activities (e.g. singing, fortune telling, gambling, opium smuggling) that deviated from the goal of rehabilitation and reproduced further dependency upon the state. Comparing the state’s remodeling of disability to fit the military-industrial system with individual investments in disability to meet familial responsibilities, I argue that wartime rehabilitation programs failed to strengthen the link between disabled veterans and the Nationalist welfare state.

There is no advance reading for this presentation.  This is a work in progress, so please come prepared for a thoughtful discussion to offer Chao constructive critical feedback.

To receive updates about future events, subscribe to the Disability Studies Workshop listserv here: https://lists.uchicago.edu/web/subscribe/disstudies-reading, or check out our website: https://voices.uchicago.edu/disabilitystudies/.

All Disability Studies Workshop events are free and open to the public. Unless otherwise noted, events this quarter will be hosted in Saieh Hall, Room 103.  Saieh 103 wheelchair accessible, though for navigational purposes, please note that it is on the west side of the building, down a long hallway (with a somewhat uneven tiled surface) from the accessible front entrance. An overall campus map is available here, and one focused on accessible entrances and exits to Saieh Hall is here. We are committed to making the workshop accessible; if there are accommodations that would be of use to you, please contact mgborus@uchicago.edu or shrutiv@uchicago.edu.

Contact Shruti Vaidya (shrutiv@uchicago.edu) or Matthew Borus (mgborus@uchicago.edu) with any questions or concerns.