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.”

Sami Schalk, author and assistant professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, will give a lecture titled "504 and Beyond: Disability Politics and the Black Panther Party" following an introduction by Christopher-Rasheem McMillan (GWSS and Dance).

Abstract: How did the Black Panther Party engage with disability politics in their activism and revolutionary agenda? Sami Schalk will explore their involvement in the 1977 504 sit-in and use their work to make larger arguments about how black activists articulate and enact disability politics differently than the mainstream, white disability movement.

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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