The Center for Material Culture Studies (CMCS) at the University of Delaware invites proposals for its third biennial conference, “The Disability Gaze: Material and Visual Approaches.” Submission Deadline: September 15, 2021
"The Disability Gaze: Material and Visual Approaches"
University of Delaware, April 29-30, 2022
Confirmed keynote speaker is Riva Lehrer, artist, writer, and curator who powerfully addresses the socially-challenged body across her works from painted portraits to her award-winning memoir Golem Girl.
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How does being disabled change the ways people view the world and the things they create? What generative possibilities does disability provoke? Valuable scholarship has explored disabled people as objects of vision and charted the phenomenon of staring which historically cast them as “curiosities,” “freaks,” and as “other.” “The Disability Gaze” will address the opposite phenomenon, considering disabled people as subjects and the power of their gazes as they claim and assert their own performance, identity, and even citizenship. ...
Topics/Areas may include but are not limited to:
* how disabled people have portrayed themselves
* negotiated modes of picturing disability in art and literature
* creation of empathy through representation
* designed objects and artifacts of technology
* advertisements and ephemera targeted at disabled users
* contemporary and performance artists’ responses to disability
* theoretical frameworks of the “disability gaze”
* decolonizing disabled stories and identities
