2/16 – Dr. Alyson Patsavas

Workshop Sessions

Alyson Patsavas

Clinical Assistant Professor Disability and Human Development UIC

Thinking Disability Through Pain: The Logic of Accounting and The Possibilities of Crip Counter-logics

2/16 Rosenwald Hall 329 12:00-1:30

My talk presents research from my book project, The Logic of Accounting: Pain, Promises, and Prescriptions, which critically examines the discursive construction of pain and pain relief as a distinct cultural, economic, and political “problem.” I first interrogate how contemporary U.S. cultural discourses frame pain as simultaneously a unique medical condition (versus a symptom), a national crisis (first of pain and then of pain relief), and a personal imperative of self-governance and self-management (to overcoming the problem of pain). I detail the specific role that economic rationality plays in structuring these broader understandings of pain as costly—to the nation, community, family, and the self—which in turn frames both affective and material responses to pain. In doing so, I map out what I call a “logic of accounting for pain” as a means of connecting seemingly disparate discourses to the underlying rationality that conditions how we think and ultimately feel pain. Against this backdrop, I outline feminist, crip and queer interventions into this logic. In doing so, I use pain as a theoretical leverage point to further what I have called “cripistemologies of pain” or specific epistemologies built from the action and analysis embedded within critical disability perspectives and commitments to ask: what does it mean to think disability through pain?

Bio: Alyson Patsavas is a Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor in the department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Her scholarship focuses on the cultural politics of pain, the cultural politics of health and illness, the intersections of queer theory and disability studies, and representations of disability in film, television, and popular culture. Her work appears in Different Bodies: Essays on Disability in Film and Television, The Feminist Wire, Somatechnics, Disability Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. Patsavas is also a writer and producer on the forthcoming documentary film Code of the Freaks that examines crip culture’s response to Hollywood representations of disability.

2/9 Chao Wang

Workshop Sessions

The Disability Studies Study Group is pleased to present:

Chao Wang, Ph.D. Candidate in History
Christian Missionaries, Blind Converts, and Braille Literacy in China (1874-1911)
Rosenwald Hall 329
February 9th*, 12:30-2:00
refreshments will be provided
*please note non-standard time and date*

This paper examines braille communication in Late-Qing China through the lens of missionary education for the blind. It charts a transformation in the way China’s blind people were “rescued” by Christian charity from stigmas of poverty and illiteracy, and were reconceived as members of Christian community by their ability to read the Bible in Chinese braille (modu zifa 摩讀字法), an adapted tactile writing system first taught in missionary schools. William H. Murray (1843-1911), a Scottish Presbyterian and former Bible colporteur in Beijing, worked out a mandarin-based braille system and used it to teach both blind and sighted beggars to learn simple Chinese characters. After its initial success, Murray managed to open a private school for the blind (Beijing xungu xuetang 北京訓瞽學堂) in 1874 with the support of the Scottish Bible Society, and recruited many blind children from poor families. I argue that the institutional advocacy of Chinese braille not only challenged the norm of written Chinese (i.e. the blind and sighted sharing the same tactile-phonetic medium to read Chinese without learning its characters), but also provided a form of religious inclusion for both blind and sighted people. The paper thus contributes to questions of conversion, literacy and the institutional management of disability.

The article, to be read before the meeting can be accessed here (available starting 2/4): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1d482dTkFcoUXFGZ1JzNjlnYWs?usp=sharing

Updated Winter Quarter Schedule

Quarter Schedules

Our updated winter quarter schedule is below. We look forward to this excellent lineup of presenters!

All meetings are in Rosenwald Hall 329 12:00-1:30pm unless otherwise noted.  An overall campus map is at https://maps.uchicago.edu/, and one focused on accessible entrances and exits to Rosenwald is at https://maps.uchicago.edu/ada/mainquad/rosenwal.shtml

2/9 — Chao Wang, PhD Student in History “Christian Missionaries, Blind Converts, and Braille Literacy in China (1874-1911)”

2/16 – Alyson Patsavas, Clinical Assistant Professor Disability and Human Development UIC. “Thinking Disability Through Pain: The Logic of Accounting and The Possibilities of Crip Counter-logics”

3/2 – Presentation: Shruti Vaidya, Ph.D. student in Comparative Human Development. Working title: “Care, Disability, and the Indian Nation-State”

Any materials to be read before the meetings can be accessed here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1d482dTkFcoUXFGZ1JzNjlnYWs?usp=sharing

Spaces are still available to present in Spring quarter, so please contact the workshop coordinators if interested.

Call for Papers: Chicago Disability Studies Conference 2018

Announcements

DSSG is pleased to forward the following call for papers which may be of interest to many of our members!

Chicago Disability Studies Conference 2018

From the Margins to the Center: Disability Studies in Other Disciplines
April 20-21, 2018

 

Friday, April 20th, 9:00 am – 3:00 pm

at the University of Illinois at Chicago

 & Saturday, April 21st, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

at the University of Chicago

Keynote Speaker: Karen Nakamura

Professor of Anthropology
University of California Berkeley

 

Organized by:

UIC Disability and Human Development Student Association &

University of Chicago Organization of Students with Disabilities

 

Disability Studies has radical potential to revolutionize other fields of study. Disability Studies has brought into question foundational narratives of modern societies and has forced us to rethink how we conceive of ourselves, our bodies, communities, and nations. It has challenged academic communities to turn their attention to the accessibility of classrooms as well as the built environment on campuses. It has encouraged activists to reconsider what intersectionality can look like in practice and broadened conceptions of access. And it has prompted professional communities, such as medical experts and social workers, to profoundly transform practice by redefining notions of care. This conference encourages deeper conversations between academic and non-academic spaces,  university administration, social work, medical professional fields, and activism, to promote the valuable connections between theory and practice in all of those spaces. The 2018 Chicago Disability Studies Conference asks: What does it mean to bring disability, and the academic approaches based around disability, out of the margins and into the center? “Centering,” in this context, means to treat as essential the issues, perspectives, and insights that have often been placed at the margins. It does not mean to crowd out other perspectives but to occupy the same space.

 

This event is free, accessible, and open to the public. We invite submissions from graduate students, undergraduate students, activists, and community members. Papers and presentations that approach disability practically, conceptually, politically, affectively, epistemologically, and/or ontologically are welcome. Presenters from other fields often considered alongside Disability Studies—Deaf Studies, Mad Studies, etc.—are welcome to apply and explore the boundaries of these disciplines and categories.

 

Possible topics and questions to explore include, but are not limited to:

  • Intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991): How does centering disability impact our understanding of class, race, gender, and sexuality? What does it mean to center disability as an identity category and embodiment? How does our thinking about disability change when we think about intersections rather than margins and centers?
  • Inside and Outside Disability Studies: What are the borders of disability and Disability Studies? How do other embodied experiences, identity categories, and academic fields, such as Deaf Studies, Mad Studies, Life Course Studies, etc., speak to or with Disability Studies?
  • Social justice: What does it mean to center disability in other social movements, such as feminism, reproductive justice, labor, anti-racism, and anti-violence work? How can different identity-based movements re-center issues around each other? What critical and utopian horizons open when disability is included?
  • Citizenship: How does centering disability inform, complicate, and shift current debates regarding national identity, citizenship, refugee/immigrant status, etc.?
  • Environment, ecology, and climate change: What does it mean to center disability in discussions about natural disasters and climate change? Does this change how we think of vulnerability and resiliency?
  • Professional spheres: How is training in disability studies benefitting other professional disciplines, particularly the medical or rehabilitation sciences? Why should other professional disciplines incorporate and center disability?
  • Pain and trauma: How does centering disability in discussions of pain and trauma complicate current narratives surrounding these issues?
  • Academia and accessibility: How does centering disability affect or transform the classroom and/or the campus? How can Disability Studies and related fields change our models of accessibility and accommodation?

 

We invite everyone to consider these questions and others as they submit papers that demonstrate how disability are being centered in their scholarship, practice, and activism by Friday, February 23rd, at 11:59 PM. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.

 

Presentation Times:

Graduate Students: 10-15 minutes

Undergraduate Students: 5-10 minutes

Community Members: 5-15 minutes

 

Please submit abstracts using the following Google Form:

https://goo.gl/forms/cqmjLea9ISlOIpxl2  

 

If you have any questions or have difficulty accessing the submission form, contact Courtney Mullin at: cmulli4@uic.edu   

Winter Quarter 2018 Schedule

Quarter Schedules

The Disability Studies Study Group is pleased to announce our winter quarter schedule! Spaces are still available to present in Spring quarter, so please contact the workshop coordinators if interested.

All meetings are in Rosenwald Hall 329 12:00-1:30pm unless otherwise noted.  An overall campus map is at https://maps.uchicago.edu/, and one focused on accessible entrances and exits to Rosenwald is at https://maps.uchicago.edu/ada/mainquad/rosenwal.shtml

1/5-Reading Discussion:  Mad at School by Margaret Price’s

1/19-Reading Discussion:  of “Un/Safe Disclosures; Scenes of Disability and Trauma” by Alison Kafer.

2/2- Presentation: Chao Wang, Ph.D. Student in History. Working title: “Christian Missionaries, Blind Converts, and Braille Literacy in China (1879-1911)”

2/16 -Presentation: Dr. Alyson Patsavas, Clinical Assistant Professor, UIC Disability and Human Development. Please stay tuned for talk title

3/2 – Presentation: Shruti Vaidya, Ph.D. student in Comparative Human Development. Working title: “Care, Disability, and the Indian Nation-State”

Any materials to be read before the meeting can be accessed here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B1d482dTkFcoUXFGZ1JzNjlnYWs?usp=sharing