Dr. Jason Farr, associate professor of English in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, has co-organized a conference titled “Archive and Theory: The Future of Anglo-American Disability Studies” at The Clark Library and UCLA next month.
The two-day conference, which explores disability in the contexts of history, literature, philosophy and archival research, takes place Friday, Oct 7, and Saturday, Oct. 8.
Though the conference will be in-person, it will also be livestreamed. Details about the event and free registration is available online. No registration is needed to watch the livestream.
Over the last two decades, the cultural and historical study of disability has emerged as a vital field of inquiry, transforming how we understand various forms of corporeal and cognitive difference in the early modern period. In turn, the increasing scholarly focus on earlier periods has pressing implications for our constructions of disability in the present. This conference aims to foster two overlapping and mutually illuminating conversations: one about the role that theory plays in how we represent and interpret archival sources, and another about how the archive invites us to critique the historical assumptions and (occasional) limitations of theoretical inquiry.
