Autreat 2010 Call for Proposals

Autreat is a retreat-style conference run by Autism Network International (www.ani.ac), for autistic people and our families, friends, supporters, and interested professionals. We are accepting presentation proposals for Autreat 2010, to be held Monday-Friday, June 28-July 2, 2010, in Bradford, Pennsylvania (approximately 80 miles from the nearest major airport at Buffalo, New York).

FOR HELP PREPARING A PROPOSAL:

If you want to submit a proposal but you have trouble reading these instructions and putting your proposal in the requested format, contact cfp-help (at) autreat.com for help. Please send only plain text
messages, with no attachments.

WHAT KINDS OF WORKSHOPS ARE WANTED AT AUTREAT?

Autreat is very different from typical autism conferences:

WHEN PREPARING A PROPOSAL FOR CONSIDERATION, BE AWARE THAT THE *PRIMARY* AUDIENCE AT AUTREAT IS AUTISTIC PEOPLE.

Parents and professionals do attend, and most who attend find the presentations to be of interest, but Autreat is basically autistic space.

Be sure your information is being presented in a manner that is both helpful to and respectful of autistic people.

We expect that you will be speaking *to* us, not speaking to non-autistic people *about* us.

We are interested in presentations, by either autistic or non-autistic people, about POSITIVE WAYS OF LIVING WITH AUTISM, about functioning as autistic people in a neurotypical world, and about the disability movement and its significance for autistic people.

We are interested in educational and informative presentations, not in sales pitches for a presenter’s products or services. If you are representing a commercial enterprise and would like a forum to sell products or services at Autreat, please contact exhibitors (at) autreat.com for information about attending Autreat as a vendor.

We are *not* interested in presentations about how to cure, prevent, or overcome autism.

We do *not* appreciate having non-autistic people come into our space to talk to each other about how difficult we are to deal with, or how heroic they are for putting up with us.

If your presentation is geared toward the interests of parents or professionals, it should focus on positive ways of appreciating and supporting autistic people, not on reinforcing negative attitudes about autism and autistic people.

AUTREAT AIMS TO BE WELCOMING AND RELEVANT TO THE BROADEST POSSIBLE CROSS-SECTION OF THE AUTISTIC POPULATION.

Autreat is attended by autistic people who speak and by autistic people who do not speak;

by autistic people who communicate fluently and by autistic people who have limited communication;

by autistic people who live independently and by autistic people who need intensive support with daily living;

by autistic people who have jobs and by autistic people who live on disability benefits;

by autistic people who are able to present as "socially acceptable" and by autistic people who require support to help them manage their behavior;

by autistic people who have been labeled "high-functioning" and by autistic people who have been labeled "low-functioning"—including some autistic people who have had *both* labels, at different times or under different circumstances.

While it is not expected that any one presentation will be of interest to each and every autistic person, we do look for presentations that will appeal to the widest possible audience.

We are *not* interested in presentations that reinforce what we consider to be artificial distinctions between members of our community who are labeled "low-" vs."high-functioning."

A NOTE ABOUT "PERSONAL EXPERIENCE" PRESENTATIONS:

Be aware that everyone at Autreat either knows what it's like to be autistic, or knows what it's like to care about someone who is autistic.

All of us have our own personal stories. Presentations about the presenters' personal stories are not going to generate much interest, unless you're able to use your story in a way that will help other people to share and understand their own experiences in a new way.

Your proposal should describe what participants can expect to get out of your presentation, not just what personal experiences you're going to talk about.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PRESENTATION TOPICS OF INTEREST

Please review the ANI web site (www.ani.ac) and the past Autreat brochures (http://www.ani.ac/past-workshops.htm), to get an idea of ANI's philosophy and what Autreat is about. This will help you create the kind of presentation most likely to interest Autreat participants.

If you have never attended Autreat before, you may wish to consider attending first, before submitting a proposal to give a presentation. In our experience, presentations usually get more positive feedback when presenters have some familiarity with Autreat and its participants, before they give presentations there. Active participation in ANI’s online community, and attendance at other self-advocacy events run by and for autistic people, are other good ways to get a feel for how Autreat is different from typical autism conferences. If you wish to submit a proposal and you’ve never been to Autreat before, please give us as much information as possible about your past experience with other autistic-run activities and events.

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF PRESENTERS?

If you submit a proposal, we expect you to be available to attend Autreat if we accept your proposal, and to give your presentation on the day and time scheduled. We make every effort to accommodate presenters' preferences in setting the Autreat schedule, but it is not always possible to give every presenter his or her preferred time slot.

Presenters are expected to send advance copies of any handouts or slides they plan to use, so that we can prepare alternate format copies for print-impaired attendees.

Presenters are expected to consent for their presentations to be recorded, and for the recordings to be sold by Autism Network International.

Presenters are invited to attend all of Autreat. If presenters opt not to attend the entire event, they are expected to arrive on-site by 8:30 a.m. for afternoon presentations, and to arrive the night before for morning presentations.

Please be prepared to meet these expectations if you decide to submit a proposal.

Presenters are also encouraged to submit an article on their topic for inclusion in the program book. Like handouts and visual aids, articles need to be submitted in a timely manner, so we can prepare copies in alternate formats.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE PRESENTERS?

Individual Autreat presenters receive free registration for Autreat, including on-site meals and lodging in a shared (2-person) room. (A private room may be available at the presenter’s own expense.) This free registration is for the presenter *only*, not for a presenter’s family members or support staff.

In the case of panel presentations consisting of three or more presenters, we offer one complete four-day Autreat registration, plus a single-day registration (including three meals and one overnight, if desired) for each additional panelist. Therefore, a panel of X presenters is entitled to a total of 4+(X-1) free days/overnights. Panelists may divide these free days amongst their members as they wish. Panel presenters are of course welcome to register and stay for additional days if they wish.

ANI is a volunteer-run, member-supported grassroots organization with minimal funding. We cannot reimburse for off-site expenses, nor can we pay travel expenses or honoraria. If your proposal is accepted, we will send you a formal letter of invitation if this would help you in raising your own travel funds.

Presenters are entitled to receive one free copy of the recording of their presentations.

PROPOSALS SHOULD INCLUDE:

* Your name and title (if any) exactly as you want them listed in program materials should your proposal be accepted

* Contact information (address, phone, fax and/or email if you have them)

* Title of your proposed presentation

* Detailed description for consideration by the Planning Committee

* Brief (5 sentences or less) abstract exactly as you want it listed in program materials should your proposal be accepted

* Indicate ONE theme that BEST relates to your proposed presentation:

[ ] Advocacy skills
[ ] Life skills/adaptive strategies
[ ] Helpful support services
[ ] Communication
[ ] Social/interpersonal issues
[ ] Personal/self-awareness/self-development issues
[ ] Autistic community and culture
[ ] Education
[ ] Employment
[ ] Family issues
[ ] Residential issues
[ ] Disability rights and politics
[ ] Autism research and theory
[ ] Other (describe):

* Indicate which group(s) you believe would find your proposed presentation of interest. Check as many as apply. Briefly describe what your presentation would offer to each group:

[ ] Autistic adults
[ ] Autistic teenagers
[ ] Family members of autistic people
[ ] Educators
[ ] Clinicians
[ ] Service providers
[ ] Other (specify):

* Brief (5 sentences or less) presenter bio exactly as you want it listed in program materials should your proposal be accepted

* Any audiovisual equipment you would need for your presentation

* If you have never presented at Autreat before, please also include an introduction for the Planning Committee summarizing your relevant experience, including any presentations or other education/advocacy activities elsewhere, and the nature of your interest in autism and/or in general disability issues.

PROPOSAL DEADLINE:

January 20, 2010

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

Proposals can be submitted via email to proposals (at) autreat.com, or submitted online at www.ani.ac/aut10cfp.php, or sent via postal mail to

Autism Network International
P.O. Box 35448
Syracuse NY 13235
USA

When your proposal is received, you will be sent a brief acknowledgment confirming that we have received your proposal. If you have not received this confirmation within 48 hours of submitting your proposal, then we may not have received your proposal! If you haven’t received confirmation within 48 hours, please contact proposals (at) autreat.com and let us know. Please save a copy of your proposal, so you can resend it if necessary.

WHAT IF I DON'T WANT TO PRESENT, BUT I HAVE AN IDEA FOR A PRESENTATION I'D LIKE TO SEE?

If you want to make suggestions for Autreat presentations, or make comments about previous presentations or presenters, please fill out the questionnaire available at www.ani.ac/autplan2.php.

WHAT IF I WANT MORE INFORMATION ABOUT AUTREAT?

You can find a lot of general information, including a link to join the Autreat Information mailing list, at www.autreat.com. If you have specific questions and can't find the answers on the web page, you may send email to info (at) autreat.com.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Disability Studies Quarterly: Disability and Rhetoric

The profound insight of Disability Studies is its conception of disability as a representational system rather than as a medical problem, a deficit, or a personal tragedy (Thomson, 1997). In this view, disability is regarded not as a settled physical or cognitive fact but rather as a discourse, a collection of figures and narratives, tropes and topoi, speakers and audiences that suggest identities and positions in the world to those participating in the discourse. The analysis of disability, then, necessarily goes beyond medical and psychological perspectives to consider how words and other symbols may be used, recalling Kenneth Burke (1969), by human agents, “to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents” (41). Disability, to say it another way, is inherently rhetorical and may best be understood through methods of rhetorical inquiry and analysis.

To that end, a special issue of the Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ) will address the topic of rhetoric and disability. While Disability Studies has revealed the essentially discursive nature of disability, rhetorical theory and analysis promise to further the discussion by contributing a unique set of methods, terms, and concepts. Rhetorical method is a particularly important concern, and we are especially interested in essays that illustrate diverse methods and modes of rhetorical analysis as these relate to disability. Essays may analyze the workings of rhetoric in printed works about disability but also in other media, including film, music, web-texts, graphic novels, and other forms of sound and image.

We define “disability” broadly to include physical, cognitive, and intellectual difference. The ideal essays will enrich understandings of the relationship of rhetoric and disability, but will also serve as models for future scholarship in studies of symbolic representations of disability. Potential issues or topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Disability as, in, or and rhetoric
• Disability and or as trope
• Disability rhetorics in the media
• Disability rhetorics in the classroom, workplace, or home
• Disability rhetorics and narrative
• Disability and digital rhetorics
• Activism and rhetoric
• Disability and audience
• Disability and rhetorical appeals, the rhetorical canons, and/or the rhetorical triangle
• Disability and legal/governmental rhetorics
• Rhetorics of accessibility
• Rhetorical constructions of disabled identity

Timeline

• Queries or abstracts sent by February 1, 2010
• Full submissions due July 1, 2010
• Final revisions due November 31, 2010
• Publication in the Winter 2011 issue of DSQ.

Submission guidelines

Manuscripts must be in the form of a Word document and:

• Have a cover page that includes the author's name, institutional affiliation, and contact information
• Have an abstract of 100-150 words
• Be between 3,000-6,000 words in length (approximately 10-20 double-spaced pages)
• Provide full references for all citations
• Include a brief biography of the author (50-100 words)

Follow DSQ guidelines: http://www.dsq-sds.org/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

Please send queries and submissions to John Duffy (jduffy@nd.edu) and
Melanie Yergeau (yergeau.1@osu.edu).

References

Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Thomson, R. G. (1997). Disability, identity, and representation: An introduction. In R.G. Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 5-18.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS Conference: “Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture: Engaging Publics and Pedagogies”

November 19-20, 2010
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Conference Co-Chairs:
Sarah Brophy, Associate Professor, Department of English and Cultural
Studies, McMaster University
Janice Hladki, Associate Professor, School of the Arts, McMaster University

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 15, 2010

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION:
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore how visual cultural
practices image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to
Patricia Zimmermann's call for “radical media democracies that animate
contentious public spheres” (2000, p. xx). Our aim is to explore how health,
disability, and the body are theorized, materialized, and politicized in
forms of visual culture including photography, video art, graphic memoir,
film, body art and performance, and digital media. Accordingly, we invite
proposals for individual papers and roundtables that consider how
contemporary visual culture makes bodies political in ways that matter for
the future of democracy. Proposals may draw on fields such as: visual
culture, critical theory, disability studies, health studies, science
studies, autobiography studies, indigenous studies, feminisms, queer
studies, and globalization/transnationalism.

CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
*Rebecca Belmore,* internationally recognized Anishinabekwe artist,
Vancouver (exhibitions of her performance, video, installation, and
sculpture include: Venice Biennale, Sydney Biennale, Brooklyn Museum of Art,
Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts);
*Lisa Cartwright,* Professor of Communication and Science Studies and
Affiliated Faculty in Gender Studies, Department of Communication,
University of California, San Diego (/Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s
Visual Culture/; /Moral Spectatorship: Technologies of Voice and Affect in
Postwar Representations of the Child/)
*Robert McRuer,* Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of English, George
Washington University, Washington, DC (/Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of
Queerness and Disability/; /The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American
Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities/);
*Ato Quayson,* Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora
and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto (/Aesthetic Nervousness:
Disability and the Crisis of Representation/; /Relocating Postcolonialism/).

The conference will also feature /Scrapes: Unruly Embodiments in Video Art,/
an exhibition curated by Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki, at the McMaster
Museum of Art.

POSSIBLE THEMATICS:
1. Technologies
-- medical technologies (e.g. medical imaging, drug therapies, prosthetics
and other devices) and their implications for embodiment, subjectivity,
community, kinship, and politics
-- corporeality and the senses as sites/forms of knowledge-making
-- biopolitics and surveillance
-- the relationship between “old” and “new” technologies
-- how technologies mediate social spaces of embodiment and interaction
-- interrogations of the human and posthuman in medicine, science, and art

2. Cultural Production
-- cultural pedagogy; the production of knowledge in sites of cultural
production (e.g. galleries, festivals, classrooms, online, etc.)
-- counter-publics (e.g. disability culture)
-- indigenous modes of cultural production
-- diasporic/transnational issues and practices
-- new representational modes (e.g. digital arts, graphic memoir)
-- documentary practices
-- “doing politics in art” (Bennett)

3. Disability
-- medical, scientific, and cultural discourses of disability
-- performing and witnessing embodied difference
-- interrogations of impairment
-- genetics, reproduction, eugenics
-- dis-ease and disorder
-- “ability trouble” (McRuer)
-- “radical crip images” (McRuer)

4. Affect
-- explorations of “ugly feelings” (Ngai), “aesthetic nervousness”
(Quayson), “moral spectatorship” (Cartwright), “empathic vision” (Bennett),
and “seeing for” (Bal)
-- relationships to medicalization, regulation, and surveillance
-- affect as generative/productive in relation to concepts of ethical
spectatorship and witnessing
-- relationships between corporeality and theorizations of nature as dynamic
and agentic (Barad, Grosz, Haraway)
-- can we/should we move beyond the theories that posit /negative/ affect as
a prime site for ethics?
-- affect and global politics: representations of global mobilities,
violence, war, terrorism

HOW TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL:
We kindly invite submissions from scholars, artists, health professionals,
community members, and activists in all areas and disciplines.
Concurrent sessions will be 90 minutes in length. Proposals for the
following formats will be considered:
1) Individual papers: 15 minutes in length
2) Roundtables: 4-5 participants, including a designated moderator and a
plan for facilitated discussion of ideas
All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

Individual paper submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words
3) paper title and a 300-500 word abstract; the description of the paper’s
content should be as specific as possible and indicate relevance to one or
more of the conference thematics.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note
that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

Roundtable submissions should include:
1) affiliation and contact information for each participant
2) a biographical note of up to 200 words for each participant
3) roundtable title and a 500 word proposal. The proposal should both
indicate the relevance of the roundtable to one or more of the conference
thematics and outline the organization of the proposed discussion.
4) details of audiovisual needs (e.g. DVD, LCD projection, and/or VHS). Note
that participants will need to bring their own laptops.

All submissions should be sent via email attachment to viscult@mcmaster.ca
by January 15, 2010. Please use the subject
line “proposal for Health, Embodiment, and Visual Culture.” Attachments
should be in .doc or .rtf formats.

If electronic submission is not possible, please mail or fax proposals to
arrive by January 15, 2010.

Address: Sarah Brophy & Janice Hladki: Health, Embodiment, and Visual
Culture Conference
c/o Department of English & Cultural Studies
Chester New Hall 321
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4L9
Fax: 905-777-8316

Call for essays: LGBTQ responses to mental health system

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call for essays: LGBTQ responses to mental health system
by Katherine Mancuso - Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 06:48 PM

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HEADCASE: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, And Queer (LGBTQ) Writers and Artists on Mental Illness

Edited by Teresa Theophano, LMSW

Headcase will be an anthology comprised of 15-20 nonfiction pieces by writers and artists both established and new, exploring the theme of mental health, mental illness, and mental health care in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) community. The book is currently being considered for publication by a major queer press.

The anthology seeks essays, poetry, and comics by queer consumers of mental health services or queer individuals who have been diagnosed, but do not identify as patients, with mental illness. Works should explore the intersection of queerness and mental health and can include topics such as psychotropics; Gender Identity Disorder and its acceptance or rejection as a legitimate mental disorder; conventional v. holistic treatment; experiences in therapy, groups, and/or institutions; how race and ethnicity, class, sex, gender identity, age, and disability impact access to treatment; addiction, self-medicating, and recovery.

Modest compensation provided upon publication to contributors whose pieces are chosen.

Guidelines:

• Pieces should be between 750 and 1500 words (approximately 3 to 5 double-spaced pages).
• While the deadline for a 2010 publication date has not yet been established, submitting your piece by December 1, 2009 is recommended.
• Descriptions of pieces in progress are also welcome.
• Submissions should be sent as a Microsoft Word document, double-spaced, 12 pt. font, Times New Roman font.
• Please provide a brief (100 words or less) bio with your submission
• Teresa Theophano is a licensed social worker, out queer mental health consumer, and the author of Queer Quotes (Beacon Press, 2004).
  

Please send submissions/project descriptions to her at headcase_anthology@yahoo.com

Critical Disability Discourse Call for Papers

York University’s Critical Disability Studies Graduate Student Program has launched an academic journal as of November 2009. Critical Disability Discourse is a bilingual, interdisciplinary journal, publishing articles that focus on experiences of disability within a predominantly Canadian context. The journal considers articles from scholars in a variety of academic fields, but preference will be given to work submitted by graduate students.

Possible topics can include but are not limited to the following:

• Critical theory and disability: feminism, post-modernism, Marxism, etc.
• History of disability: Antiquity, Middle Ages, Victorian Age, Industrial Age, etc.
• Law and public policy, and disability
• Qualitative and quantitative research pertaining to disability
• Education and disability
• Culture: disability-related literature and film analysis
• Employment, market, workforce, and income security in relation to disability
• Disability-related topics in social sciences: psychology, sociology, geography, political science
• Assessment of accessibility accommodations
• Technology and disability
  

Submission guidelines are as follows:

1. Articles must critically address a question about an aspect of disability and offer a new angle of thought and insight; they should contribute to scholarship in the field of Critical Disability Studies. Articles must involve a critical argument, rather than be only descriptive.
2. Articles must be submitted in either English of French. Authors must consent to the translation of their articles for publication.
3. In submitting a manuscript, authors affirm that the research is original and unpublished, is not in press or under consideration elsewhere, and will not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration by the Journal.
4. Articles must be 3,000-7,000 words (including quotations, references, footnotes, tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations).
5. In promoting inclusion and accessibility, the journal accepts and encourages tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations within the article. However, all tables, figures, diagrams, and illustrations must include detailed written descriptions.
6. An abstract of 100-150 words should summarize the main arguments and themes of the article, the methods and results obtained, if the author’s own research was conducted, and the conclusions reached. A list of 5-7 keywords should also be included after the abstract.
7. We ask that authors are mindful of their language choices pertaining to disability and that they justify the use of controversial words.
8. Articles are peer-reviewed. Authors’ names and other identifying information must be removed in order to be sent to reviewers.
9. Authors are responsible for ethics approval for manuscripts by receiving approval from their own institutions. Proof of ethics approval (if applicable) should be provided to the Journal.
10. The Journal’s style generally follows the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association; English spelling follows the most recent edition of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.
11. Manuscripts must be entirely double-spaced (including quotations, notes, references) in 12-point Times New Roman font.
12. The Journal accepts footnotes, but only sparingly.

To submit, please register as an author on our website and undergo the submission process. Registration is free. If you have any questions, contact CDD Managing Editor Jen Rinaldi at cdsj@yorku.ca.

Submission deadline is March 1, 2010.

For more information and updates, please use the following links:

• Critical Disability Studies Homepage: www.yorku.ca/cds_grad
• Critical Disability Discourse Online Journal: https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/cdd

26th Annual Pacific Rim International Conference on Disabilities

The International Pacific Rim Conference (Pac Rim) on Disabilities has been widely recognized over the past 25 years as one of the most “diverse gatherings” in the world. The event encourages and respects voices from “diverse” perspective across numerous areas, including: voices from persons representing all disability areas; experiences of family members and supporters across all disability areas; responsiveness to diverse cultural and language differences; evidence of researchers and academics studying disability; stories of persons providing powerful lessons; examples of program providers, natural supports and allies of persons with disabilities and; action plans to meet human and social needs in a globalized world.

Each year the conference hues to its traditional areas which have bred much of the interdisciplinary research and educational advances of the last three decades. But each year new topics are introduced to foment discussion and change. The intent is to harness the tremendous synergy as generated by the intermingling of these diverse perspectives, thus, creating a powerful program which impacts each individual participant in his or her own unique way.

For more information, visit the home page of the conference:

http://www.pacrim.hawaii.edu/emailtemplate/callforpapers/