Call For Papers: Confluence and Coalition in Community: Creating Dialogue within Disability Studies

May 29-30, 2004
It is fitting that the inaugural meeting of the Canadian Disability Studies Association/Association Canadienne d'Etudes sur le Handicap at the Congress of the Social Sciences Federation of Canada, 2004, be held in Winnipeg, the birthplace of the Disabled People's Movement in Canada. We invite abstracts from academics, community members and graduate students for papers/panels on the intersections with (and within) disability and disability studies, including disability and medicine; social policy and disability; disability history; the immigrant experience and disability; law and disability; disability and queerness; disability and culture; disability in literature; feminism and disability; ethics and disability, disability and pedagogy; and disability and personal/private space.

What is Disability Studies?
How does and where can disability studies scholarship contribute to/reconfigure current discourses on disability? We invite papers and panels that question disability studies and its terms, assumptions, tendencies and directions. What are the multiple, sometimes conflicting, dialogues within disability studies? How can disability studies, science, health and policy reciprocally intersect and inform one another?

Disability and Pedagogy
We welcome papers and panels exploring questions fundamental to disability pedagogy: How can professors mentor students toward becoming disability studies scholars? What issues are at stake when disabled/non-disabled professors teach disability studies classes? What are the strategies for opening up a dialog in disability theory in 'mainstream' classes? How might taking the access requirements for diverse audience members into consideration result in presentation modalities that are new, exciting, and encourage a richer, participatory dialogue? How might imaginative thinking, spurred on by access requirements, pose new possibilities for intellectual discourse? What is the role of new technologies in teaching disability studies?

Presenters should, at minimum, plan on making their presentations fully accessible to all CDSA/ACEH attendees. This includes providing hard copy and large print hard copies (18 point font or larger), e-text versions of papers in advance of their delivery, providing audio description of visual images and charts, and supplying summaries and handouts as necessary. Presentations should also be planned so that their delivery will accommodate ASL translation within time constraints. This is an opportunity not only to meet accommodation of those in attendance, but also to enhance/re-imagine traditional modes of conference presentation.

The deadline for receipt of Abstracts is January 7, 2004. Participants will be notified of acceptance by February 7, 2004. Information on proposal submission will follow with acceptance Please submit abstracts electronically (using MS Word) to Cassandra Phillips at executivedirector@disabilitystudies.ca

Questions about the conference can be directed to Co-Chairs: Nancy Hansen email hansenn@ms.umanitoba.ca or telephone: (204) 474-6458, Dr. Zana Lutfiyya, Associate Dean, Graduate Studies and Research, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba email lutfiyy@ms.umanitoba.ca or Cassandra Phillips email: executivedirector@disabilitystudies.ca or telephone: (204)287-8411. If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax abstracts to (204)-284-5343.

Canadian Centre on Disability Studies
56 The Promenade
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada R3B 3H9

Abstracts: should include

1. Title of presentation, panel, or performance.
2. Contact information: name, affiliation, mailing address, phone number, and e-mail for each presenter.
3. Format of your proposal:
• Paper presentation (15 minute presentation)
• Panel (1 and 1/2 hour block for presentation of 3-4 papers. Please point out in your cover letter how the presenters meet the theme of the panel.