|
Disability and the Modern Black Body
The Collegium for African American Research (CAAR) will convene its seventh international conference from 18 to 21 April, 2007 at the National University in Madrid, Spain. The theme for the conference is “Blackness and Modernities.” Drawing on the conference aim to include presentations on “The Modern Black Body,” this workshop will examine how disability informs the desirability, experience, knowledge, and representation of that subjectivity.
Participants might speak to the following concerns (the list is suggestive, not exhaustive):
Literary representations of disabled modern black bodies by authors such as Maya Angelou, Pearl Cleage, Jamaica Kincaid, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker
Stage, film and television depictions of disabled modern black bodies e.g. Alex Désert in “Becker”, Jamie Foxx in “Ray”, Morgan Freeman in “Million Dollar Baby”, Cuba Gooding, Jr. in “Radio”, Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter in “In the Continuum”, Irma P. Hall in “Soul Food”, Djimon Hounsou in “In America”, Daryl “Chill” Mitchell in “Ed”, and Denzel Washington in “The Bone Collector”
Real-life disabled modern black bodies e.g. James Byrd, individuals disabled by wars, civil strife, (inter)national disasters, and police brutality
”Larger than life” or celebrity disabled modern black bodies e.g. Muhammad Ali, Lola Falana, Louis Farrakhan, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Michael Jackson, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, James Earl Jones, Teddy Pendergrass, Richard Pryor, Desmond Tutu, Luther Vandross, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins, Mary Wells, and Stevie Wonder
Comparisons between those modern black bodies with apparent disabilities and those with non-apparent ones
Health and treatment disparities amongst disabled modern black bodies e.g. the Tuskegee Syphilis Study
Issues of femininity and masculinity and disabled modern black bodies
How the idea of the disabled modern black body is/not complicated by the ideologies of “dismodernism” and “post-race”
The failure of African American Studies, Africana Studies, Caribbean Studies, and Disability Studies to examine disabled modern black bodies
One-page proposals, questions, and/or ideas should be sent by 15 April 2006 to (e-submissions preferred):
Chris Bell
PhD Student
Nottingham Trent University
College of Communication, Culture and Education
Clifton Campus, Clifton Lane
Nottingham
NG11 8NS
United Kingdom
tooferbell@yahoo.com
More information about the Madrid conference and the CAAR is available at: www.caar-web.org.
|
