GCSC Keynote Lecture: Anne Waldschmidt: The Cultural Model of Dis/ability as an Analytical Tool. Key Assumptions, Strengths and Weaknesses

For Winter Semester 2018/19 each of the lectures in the five-part lecture series addresses the key concept of Contact Zones of the Study of Culture from different interdisciplinary perspectives.  The events are open to the public and no registration is required.

Drawing on the approach of disability studies this lecture claims the relevance of culture as an analytical category for the study of disability. It starts with differentiating several fields of research that focus on disability; then it explores the notion of culture. Next, it appreciates the social model of disability, sketches its history and resulting debates. It also provides an overview on earlier attempts of conceptualizing a cultural studies approach to disability. Further, it offers an analytical perspective that uses the concept of ‘dis/ability,’ analyses impairment, disability and normality as ‘empty signifiers,’ views dis/ability as naturalized and embodied difference, and understands this category as effected by symbolic orders, bodily practices and social institutions.