Uncommon Bodies Symposium: Feb. 15-16, 2024
We hope the start of the new year has been good for you! Next month, we are organizing a major symposium on "Premodern Disability and Race in a Global Context" scheduled for Feb. 15-16, 2024. This symposium brings to the Twin Cities ten wonderful scholars (many of whom identify as BIPOC and/or disabled) who have made significant contributions to disability studies, premodern critical race studies, the history of medicine, and theater and performance. Our speakers are also brilliant teachers dedicated to making our classrooms more accessible and inclusive.
We seek your attendance and participation! Many of the planned events, including all the panel presentations, are hybrid. Two of our speakers will be joining remotely; eight will be here in person. Select the sessions that you're interested in by using this RSVP form: z.umn.edu/UncommonBodies
We seek your help in getting the word out! Please invite students, colleagues, administrators, staff, chairs of departments, and anyone who might benefit from the symposium. Please share the posters (one is a PDF, the other is a Word doc) widely. Thank you for your help in advance!
We look forward to seeing you in person or online soon!
Best wishes,
Penelope Geng (Macalester) and Jennifer Row (UMN)
An Uncommon Bodies Symposium: Premodern Disability and Race in a Global Context
The two-day Symposium, scheduled for Feb. 15-16, 2024, is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and Macalester College (St. Paul). ONLINE AND IN PERSON!
The Symposium will bring to the Twin Cities a group of leading scholars of early modernity to illuminate the intersections of disability and race in the global early modern period. Organized by longtime collaborators Jennifer E. Row (associate professor of French, UMN) and Penelope Geng (associate professor of English, Macalester College), the Symposium will focus on the interlocking histories of disability and race. Contemporary oppressive policies and attitudes that advance eugenics, ablenationalism, and state-sanctioned debilitation and disablement of communities of color are rooted in early modern notions of fitness, deservingness, godliness, and beauty. These belief systems often worked together to define what forms of bodyminds were considered “normal” (and worth preserving) and what forms were “abnormal,” “deformed,” “disabled,” and not worth saving.
How did the art and literature of the early modern period imagine able-bodiedness and disability as well as the institutional processes of disablement (such as state-neglect of diseased and impoverished communities or early carceral systems)? How did definitions of “ability” and “disability” shift during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries—a period in European history that was marked by wars of religion, urbanization, colonization, and slavery? These are some of the questions the Symposium will explore.
Our Symposium will hold space for undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows to learn from, socialize, and collaborate with speakers. Undergraduate and graduate students from both of our institutions will have a chance to do hands-on research with invited speakers in the Twin Cities’ premodern archives (e.g., the UMN Wangensteen Library and the Minneapolis Institute of Art).