Events Calendar

On April 4-6, the 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered, will bring leading disability scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss the relevance and importance of disability to their respective fields. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed) influence of disability on and in the performing, visual, and literary arts, in philosophy and religion, in political and economic life, and in everyday language, as we explore when and how minds and bodies “misfit.”

Susan Schweik, author of The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, will give a lecture titled "Unfixed: How the Women of the Glenwood Institution Overturned Ideas About IQ—and Why We Don't Know About It." Schweik will explore the history of a now famous "Iowa Idea"—the designation of women deemed "feebleminded." What, she asks, can we learn when these women leave the margins and become the center of this story about unfixing, misfitting, and the long undoing of eugenics? Her lecture will follow an introduction by Lisa Heineman (History and GWSS).

View the complete schedule, as well as speaker bios and resources at https://misfittingsymposium.com/.

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the Ida Beam Visiting Professorships Program, the UI Campus Activities Board, and the UI School of Social Work.

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