Brian Kerr

Event announcement. There’s an empty page for the conference, with details having just arrived via e-mail:

Annual UMInDS Spring Conference
April 4, 2008 Pendleton Room Michigan Union

Disability and War

1:00 pm Poster Session by UM Students and Faculty

2:00 pm Panel: Disability at War

• Rick Briggs, Brain Injury Association of Michigan “Traumtic Brain Injury — The Signature Wound of the War on Terror”
• Sally Chivers, University of Trent “Disabled Veterans Soldier On: Canadians Coming Home from Afghanistan”
• Nina Berman, Documentary Photographer “Purple Hearts“

3:30 pm Coffee Break and Poster Session Continued

4:00 pm Keynote Address Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell
U Illinois Chicago/ Temple University
“The Social Romance of Reintegration: Returning Veterans Films and the Forging of U.S. Disability Collectives”

Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature
For information contact Carrie Baker at 734 647-6251 or mcarrie@umich.edu

(tags: accessible april 4 2008 conference disability events umich uminds war)

Course announcement for a winter 2007 class, open to undergraduates and graduates at U-M, highly recommended (see also a recent syllabus):

This course provides an interdisciplinary approach to disability studies, including focus on the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, and professional schools. Some topics include the history and cultural representation of disability, advocacy, health, rehabilitation, built environment, independent living, public policy. The point of departure of the course is the idea that disability provides a critical framework that reorients the basic assumptions of various fields of knowledge, from political science to architecture, from engineering to art history, from genetics to law, from public policy to education, from biology to poetry, and so on. Disability Studies views people with disabilities not as objects but as producers of knowledge whose common history has generated a wide variety of art, music, literature, and science infused with the experience of disability. Students will have the opportunity to interact with visiting speakers from a broad range of fields. The course is offered for 1 or 3 credits. Accessible classroom with realtime captioning. For more information, please contact Kristine Mulhorn and Tobin Siebers.

I took this course in fall 2006. It was a powerful antidote to a bunch of horseshit baked into the School of Information MSI curriculum, and therefore recommended for any HCI types.

(tags: accessible course design edu umich uminds umsi universal)