From:Jim.Knox@um.cc.umich.edu Subject: Call for proposals/workshops/demonstrations THIS/ABILITY: an interdisciplinary conference on disability and the arts University of Michigan at Ann Arbor: May 18-20, 1995 "This/Ability" seeks to celebrate a rich, powerful disability culture at the same time as critique the representation of disability in the academy and mainstream. We will explore broad notions of disability and ability as these concepts relate to artistic creativity, performance, and the intellect. The conference plans to foster several concurrent dialogues among academic, disability, and arts communities, bringing together theorists and practitioners, therapists and aesthetes, architects, video an filmmakers, performers, artists, scholars, musicians, literary and cultural critics, playwrights, theater industry workers, and independent scholars. We seek a wide range of innovative concepts: academic presentation, performance, readings, demonstrations, workshops, films, installations, exhibits, lectures, and roundtables by, for and/or about people with disabilities. Your proposal may suggest the universal or the idiosyncratic, a few examples: a roundtable for activists, performers, and architects on theater access and use of space; a critique and reading of American deaf poetry and its ethnography; an exhibit of work which takes sexuality and disability as its subject; a discursive study of spectacle, spectators, "freak show," and a chronic illness such as AIDS; a demonstration of revised movement techniques for aided actors and dancers; or a videotape of performance work about cystic fibrosis. Committed to addressing the issues and concerns of the disability community at the University of Michigan and at large, we will examine aesthetic, conceptual, and metaphorical representations of disability alongside the practical and political issues of living with disability every day. Initiated by three non-disabled facilitators, the conference's planning committee is composed of both disabled and non-disabled community leaders and scholars; we wish to enable an integral dialogue among the disabled and non-disabled about the arts, at the same time as cultivate a discussion among artists and non-artists about an ever-changing, complicated notion of disability. Send abstracts and proposals, by JANUARY 15, 1995, to: Disability and the Arts Department of English 5207 Angell Hall University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Questions, comments and requests for deadline extension may be directed to: the above address fax number 313/936-0469 e-mail addresses Susan.Crutchfield@umich.edu Marcy.Epstein@umich.edu Joanne.Leonard@umich.edu PLEASE FORWARD THIS ANNOUNCEMENT TO ANYONE WHO MAY BE INTERESTED. Thanks--