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.”

Joseph Straus, Distinguished Professor at CUNY's Graduate Center and UI Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor, will give a lecture titled "Cultural Representations of Idiocy in a Modernist (Eugenic) Era," following an introduction by Marian Wilson Kimber from the UI School of Music.

Abstract: Modernist literature and music construct the future of the "Eugenic Idiot"—a feared source of violence—but also find in "idiocy" a crucial artistic resource, one that enables the sorts of artistic innovations that centrally define artistic modernism.

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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