Conference Schedule

All events take place in Stokes Auditorium, except as otherwise noted.

Art and Artifacts

Five prints of paintings from Lehrer’s “Circle Stories” series will be display in the CPGC Café before and during the conference. The film, “Self-Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer” will be shown during the conference on the wide-screen TV in the CPGC Café, Stokes Hall. These paintings can be viewed on her website.

Zubrow Lounge, KINSC The Chicago Disability History Exhibit
Curators: Sharon Snyder & David Mitchell, University of Illinois at Chicago

Life with a disability has led individuals to striking truths about the nature of corporeal differences among human bodies. At the same time, shared struggles against social obstacles have led widely varied "disabled" persons to take up alliances. Together these collectivities have generated a history of struggle, survival, and subculture in the areas of education, labor, justice, art, politics, and even philosophy. The exhibit guides visitors from a discovery of some of the first contemporary political collectivities based on shared impairments, such as those in labor unions or amidst "sheltered" workshops, to peer groups fostered within segregated educational settings, to the rise of charity industries on behalf of needy constituents. We conclude with the collective drive towards rights, employment, transportation, inclusion, and equality --the key issues of our modern day Disability Rights Movement. En route, it presents the many roles and predicaments of people with disabilities impacted by the growth of Chicago into an urban, and ultimately a global, crossroads. During the compilation of this project the curators have come to believe that the task of disability history itself leads to knowledge about shifts in human social orders.

Thursday, November 9th

4:30 PM

Keynote Speaker: "Disability Rights: The Civil Rights Movement the Left Ignores"

Julia Epstein, Director of Communications and Development,
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)

7:30-9:30 PM

Roundtable: The Consequences of Law

How does the ADA model human rights, civil rights? What are the consequences of its passage into law? How does it shape or influence other rights movements globally? What is progressive about the law, what limiting? What continuing work must be done to ensure its efficacy? Why has it been essentially marginalized as economic constraint and liability, while increasingly threatened under law with retrenchment rather than advance? What can we learn from other country-specific and international instruments that protect the rights of people with disabilities?

Arlene Mayerson, Directing Attorney, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)
Paul Steven Miller, former EEOC Commissioner, Prof. of Law, U of Washington
Cassie James Holdsworth, ADAPT and Liberty Resources CIL, Philadelphia
Arlene S. Kanter, Professor of Law and Co-Director, Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, Syracuse University

Friday, November 10th

9:30-11:30 AM

Panel: Representing Disability in Bioethical Dilemmas

How can decision-making at the beginning of life and the end of life take into account the rights of people with disabilities? What are the implications of genetic testing for people with disabilities? How can debates about the human genome project and about new technologies such as the cochlear implant more effectively incorporate the perspectives of those with disabilities?

Adrienne Asch, Edward and Robin Milstein Prof. of Bioethics, Wurzweiler School of Social Work and Director, Center for Ethics, Yeshiva University
Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, Asst. Prof. of Philosophy, Gallaudet University
Sujatha Jesudason, Project Director, Gender, Justice, and Human Genetics, Center for Genetics and Society

12:00-1:00

Film Screening: Bethel: Community and Schizophrenia in Northern Japan

Karen Nakamura, filmmaker and Asst. Professor of Anthropology and East Asian Studies, Yale University

12:00-1:00

Workshops

Applied Technologies: "Computer dictation systems--a demonstration of speech recognition technology"
Steven Lindell, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Haverford College and Joshua Carp, '07,
Humanities Center Seminar Room, Stokes Hall, open to the public.

Bioethics and the Disability Debates
Adrienne Asch, Edward and Robin Milstein Prof. of Bioethics, Yeshiva University , Swarthmore Room, Dining Center (open only to students).

Legal clinic: Disability Law
Arlene Mayerson, Directing Attorney, Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund,
Pendle Hill Room, Dining Center (open only to students).

1:30-3:30 PM:

Panel: Representing Disability in a Visual Culture

How is disability represented and acknowledged in visual culture? How do people with disabilities access and interpret this culture? What role do literature, the visual arts, and other forms of media play in representing people with disabilities as producers of knowledge and culture rather than as objects of study and medical intervention?

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Assoc. Prof. of Women’s Studies, Emory University
David Mitchell, Prof. of Disability Studies, U of Illinois at Chicago
Robert McRuer, Assoc. Prof. of English, George Washington U

4:00-6:00 PM

Lecture and Slideshow: Self-Preservation - The Art of Riva Lehrer

Talk and slideshow by Riva Lehrer featuring her work and the work of other artists with disabilities, based on a show she curated entitled “Humans Being.”

Showing of the film “Self-Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer,” followed by a roundtable discussion with Riva and the filmmakers, Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell, Dept. of Disability and Human Development, U of Illinois at Chicago

8:00 PM

Performance: Lynn Manning's "Weights"

See Manning's website at http://www.lynnmannning.com for more information

Saturday, November 11th

9:30-11:30 AM

Panel: War and Disability

What happens to bodies in wartime? What is the cost—psychologically, emotionally, socially, and economically—of the production of disability on this scale? Who survives? And who is responsible for that survival? How do we address the needs of soldiers and veterans, civilians, journalists, and others affected by war? How do we take into account the rights of people with disabilities in rebuilding psychic, social, and architectural structures in the wake of war?

David Gerber, Professor of History, SUNY Buffalo
Nerina Cevra, Advocacy Officer, Landmine Survivors Network
Dr. Jonathan Shay, Dept. of Veteran's Affairs, Boston

1:30-3:30 PM

Panel: Global Perspectives: Poverty, Economic Development, and Disability

What is the relationship between poverty and disability? How can disability rights be taken into account in poverty reduction and economic development initiatives? How can people with disabilities be active in these initiatives? How might the UN Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities impact the economic status of people with disabilities and alter the way we conceptualize disability?

Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo, Disability Working Group Coordinator for SAR/EA, World Bank
Cindy Lewis, Program Director, Mobility International USA
Karen Nakamura, Asst. Prof. of Anthropology and East Asian Studies, Yale University

4:00-5:00 PM

Reading: An Illustrated Reading by Simi Linton from her memoir My Body Politic

Simi Linton's memoir is also a portrait of the vibrant disability community of which she is a part. This illustrated reading of My Body Politic documents some of the disabled artists, activists and academics she has worked with, while framing her personal and political story with the wars in Vietnam and Iraq and their "manufacture" of disability.

8:00 PM

Performance: Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner of the Flying Words Project

American Sign Language poetry and performance.
Preview video clips here. Further information can be found here.