Past Events
Spring 2010
Entangling the discourse of choice in the debate around “assisted dying” in representations of severe disability
A talk given by visiting scholar Kateřina Kolářová
Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies
Department of Gender Studies, Charles University Prague
In a talk at UIC, Kolářová critically reflected on the discourse of individual choice that has been powerful in shaping the debate on assisted dying. Kolářová‘s argument builds on the critique that has revealed ideological and illusionary footings of this notion in relation to both sexuality and dis/ability and engages specifically with the ways in which the discourse of choice calls upon specific heteronormative as well as ableist notions to re-configure notions of sociality, relationality, responsibility, and care. Kateřina framed her discussion around the film, The Sea Inside, and German legalization of the “patient’s will” in cases of assisted dying.
Fall 2009
An Afternoon with Terry Galloway
"For Terry, a lip-reader whose primary language is speech, a reading is an emotionally charged dialogue between her audience and herself. Each reading, although almost always shot through with humor, is a uniquely different experience."
Terry Galloway is a wickedly funny, deaf, queer performance artist and author. While at UIC, she read from her memoir Mean Little Deaf Queer, showed video parodies of beloved disability icons and performed selections from her comic repertoire. Galloway’s work promises to be side-splitting and shockingly funny. Galloway is known for shaking an audience out of its gosh-aren’t-we-enlightened complacency and onto that uncomfortably narrow ledge where they’re not sure whether they should be laughing or crying.
In an event co-sponsored by the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Persons with Disabilities, the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, the Disability Resource Center and the Gender and Sexuality Center, students, staff and faculty from across campus came together to enjoy Terry’s unparalleled humor, wit and versatility.
A Performance by David Roche
“When I walk on stage, I encourage the audience to ask, ‘What happened to your face?’”
David Roche has performed his widely acclaimed one-man show “Church of 80% Sincerity” nationally and internationally. Roche is a humorist, writer and storyteller with a warm, charming wit. Roche’s vignettes reveal the surprising “gifts” that living with a facial disfigurement have given him. This performance has inspired standing ovations from the Clinton White House to the Sydney Olympics Arts Festival, from most of the 50 States to Canada, England, New Zealand and Moscow.
At UIC, David performed sections from “Church of 80% Sincerity” and engaged in an extensive question and answer session with an audience of over fifty students, staff, faculty and community members.
A Reading by Anne Finger
"Anne Finger creates a lyric prose that shimmers like a serious dream...."
--Steve Kuusisto, author of Planet of the Blind
“…skillful prose…evocative and often poetic…a nuanced history.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This unsentimental, grippingly told story will captivate readers and sensitive them to the world of the disabled.”
—Library Journal
Anne Finger, winner of the Prairie Schooner Prize in fiction for her recent collection of short stories Call Me Ahab, read selections from previously unpublished works in an intimate setting at UIC. Students and faculty from multiple departments across campus came to hear Anne read and discuss her work.
Finger is also the author of Elegy for a Disease: A Personal and Cultural History of Polio and Past Due: A Story of Disability, Pregnancy and Birth. Anne Finger has taught creative writing at Wayne State University in Detroit and at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as workshops in the community--as writer- in-residence at the Woman's Building in L.A., at the San Francisco Independent Living Resource Center and in elementary, middle, and high schools. She was the president of the Society for Disability Studies and remains active in the disability rights movement.