Call For Papers: Society for Disability Studies 17th Annual Conference
June 3-6, 2004: St. Louis, Missouri

"Dissent and Dialogue: Re-Envisioning Academic and Activist Landscapes"

St. Louis's cultural history speaks importantly to this year's conference theme, "Dissent and Dialogue: Re-Envisioning Academic and Activist Landscapes." 2004 marks the 100-year anniversary of the 1904 World's Fair, held in this year's SDS conference city, St. Louis. Used to celebrate new technologies and the intersection of multiple cultures, the fair was also a place where people
called "defectives" were put on display as curiosities and "burdens." Although we are 100 years past those events, the exclusion and
categorization of humans as abnormal on the basis of disability still occurs with profound implications for disabled populations around the world. St. Louis is an American cultural and geographic crossroads, the "Gateway to the West"; what gateways and opportunities can we now identify and create, emerging from this point in disability studies' development?

We invite papers specifically directed toward a plenary session surrounding the St. Louis World's Fair and the shift in attitudes toward disability between that era and our own. We welcome all creative and rigorous scholarship in disability studies, as well as submissions based on the prompts below.

Unpacking the Rhetoric of Inclusion: Opening Dialogues With Disability
Papers are invited that consider questions such as:

• What does inclusion mean in disability studies as it intersects with other elements of human diversity?
• How can social science, health policy, and humanistic approaches to disability inform one another?
• What are the major areas of social policy that call for action from people with disabilities today?
• How can disability studies keep its academic and activist edge in the face of increasing academic legitimacy?
• How can the expansion and growth of disability activism and
  disability studies be made possible without reproducing norms, oppressing, or ignoring others?
• How can meaningful alliances be forged between majority and minority world activists and academics?

We encourage scholarship on the intersections possible with (and within) disability and disability studies: disability and medicine; social policy and disability; the history of race and disability history; the immigrant experience and disability; law and disability rights; disability and queerness; disability and class; disability rights and HMOs; postcolonialism/third world politics and disability; feminism and disability; public and private space intersecting with personal rights to access.

Where can disability studies scholarship reformulate the discourse and methods of academic fields that have either ignored disability, or used it in highly specific ways? How can we address hierarchies between physical and cognitive disabilities? Where is the place for personal assistance workers and sign language interpreters within disability studies?

Discussing the Terms of Disability Studies
We invite papers that interrogate disability studies and its terms, its assumptions, its tendencies, and its directions. What are the multiple, sometimes conflicting, dialogues within disability studies? What important dialogues need to happen within disability studies? What conversations within disability studies need to be challenged, questioned, (re)defined, (re)interrogated, (re)invented? How can disability studies, science, and policy reciprocally intersect and inform one another?

Teaching Disability: What is Disability Pedagogy?
We especially welcome papers exploring questions fundamental to creating dialogue about disability pedagogy. For example,

• how can teachers help students see alternatives to models of charity and pity?
• What are strategies for creating discourse based in disability theory in "mainstream" classes?
• How can professors mentor students toward becoming disability studies scholars?
• What issues are at stake when disabled/nondisabled professors teach disability studies classes?
• How might taking the access requirements for
  diverse audience members into consideration result in presentation modalities that are new, exciting, and encourage a full range of dialogue?
• How might imaginative thinking, spurred on by access requirements, pose new possibilities for intellectual discourse?

We would like to reemphasize for presenters the centrality of accessible presentations to the philosophy and scholarship of SDS. Presenters should, at minimum, plan on making their presentations fully accessible to all SDS attendees. This includes providing hard copy and large print hard copies (17 point font or larger), e-text versions of papers in advance of their delivery (for open captioning), 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 captioning and ASL translation within time constraints. However, we especially encourage presenters to think about how implementing accommodations might be usedto enhance and reimagine traditional modes of conference presentation.

The deadline for proposals is December 15, 2003. We plan to notify participants of their acceptance by February 15, 2004. All abstracts will be fully reviewed and scheduled by the 2004 SDS Program Committee: Sumi Colligan and Ann Fox (co-chairs), and committee members Nirmala Erevelles, Jim Ferris, Cathy Kudlick, Linda Long, Robert McRuer, and Sharon Snyder.

Due to many excellent proposals, SDS faces an increasing limitation on the number of presentation slots available at the conference. We ask that those whose papers are chosen, and who commit to attend the SDS conference, avoid last-minute cancellation of attendance if at all possible; this will almost certainly deny other presenters the chance to share their work.

Please submit proposals electronically (using MS Word) to both Judy Holst, the SDS Executive Assistant at jholst2@uic.edu and Carol Gill at cg16@uic.edu

Questions about the conference program should be directed to Ann Fox, at anfox@davidson.edu

If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax proposals
to arrive by December 15 to:
Judy Holst
Executive Assistant, SDS
Dept. of Disability and Human Development
University of Illinois-Chicago
1640 W. Roosevelt Rd. (M/C 626)
Chicago, IL 60608-6904
Fax: 312-996-7743

Proposals should include the following information:

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 by
     presenters. Please note that panel proposals require BOTH an abstract that includes
     a 250-word description of the panel topic AND a 250 word abstract for each
     participant.)
   • Workshop (1 and 1/2 hour application of a specific program or
     exercise)
   • Presentation (literary reading, dance, video/film, etc.)
   • Other (we welcome inventive presentation possibilities)
4. Abstract (250 words) with the following: Title and author(s) or
   performer(s); explicit statement of the thesis, findings, or significance; description of
   content and structure; information on how this presentation will be made accessible;
   audiovisual requirements (please note we cannot guarantee LCD projection for
   presenters).