Jack Drescher, M.D.

Cardozo School of Law (55 Fifth Avenue) Institute of French Studies, New York University, at La Maison Française of NYU (16 Washington Mews)

With the co-sponsorship of IRIS (CNRS/EHESS) & Faculty of Law, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, and the support of UMI Transitions (CNRS/NYU)

Co-organized by Éric [...]]]> Thursday & Friday, December 1 & 2

Cardozo School of Law (55 Fifth Avenue)
Institute of French Studies, New York University, at La Maison Française of NYU (16 Washington Mews)

With the co-sponsorship of IRIS (CNRS/EHESS) & Faculty of Law, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, and the support of UMI Transitions (CNRS/NYU)

Co-organized by Éric Fassin, Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, Julie Suk, Frédéric Viguier

From May 14 to August 23, 2011, from Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest to the day the penal charges against him were dropped by the New York City justice system, the sexual assault indictment initiated by Nafissatou Diallo’s accusation provoked extraordinary public attention throughout the world. While the penal case is now over, and regardless of what becomes of the civil one, or the French lawsuits that followed, this will certainly be an affair to remember: it will remain important in the years to come not only because of what happened, but also for what it has revealed about France and the United States, as well as its potential impact on both societies. Not only is the affair a mirror; it may also turn out to be a catalyst. Thus, it would not be a mere scandal, now behind us; the DSK moment could prove momentous.

This two-day academic conference, co-organized by French and American scholars and institutions, aims at interpreting the transatlantic dimensions of this event. On the one hand, the mutual misunderstandings revealed important differences between France and the United States – not only between the legal systems, but also between the media cultures, as well as the political ones. On the other hand, the political dimensions of the story – in terms of gender, class, and race, and even sexuality – did transcend such national differences. Many feminists were quick to point it out: exceptionalism (whether French or American) is irrelevant in matters of power. As a consequence, the necessary cultural approach must eschew culturalism. In particular, attention will be paid not only to the different languages used within each society (in particular in law, media, and politics), but also to the self-examination this confrontation occasioned, and as a consequence the transformations that may result on both sides.

The conference will be organized around three related panels to draw out the legal, political, cultural, and social implications of the DSK case in the United States and France.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

4 to 6:30 pm – Introduction/Welcome and Panel I Sexual Violence in Public Discourse (Moot Court Room, Cardozo School of Law)

Panelists:

Laure Bereni (CNRS)
Kimberlé Crenshaw (Columbia Law School and UCLA School of Law)
Amy Davidson (The New Yorker)
Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre)
Frédérique Matonti (Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Moderator: Julie Suk (Cardozo School of Law)

This panel will address the media treatment on both sides of the Atlantic, not only of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case, but more generally of sexual cases and scandals. It will include questions such as what is considered “fit to print,” how, and when, the revelation of names and pictures and the cultures of privacy, the issue of sources and leaks, the coverage of the United States in France (and vice versa), the investigative traditions and the relations between the media and the political class in both countries. To what extent are media practices with regard to rape victims driven by the law of privacy and/or freedom of the press? How is the legal disposition of a sexual assault case influenced by the media’s representations of it? Whose voice gets to be heard in the public when allegations of sexual violence are made against politicians and public officials?

Friday, December 2, 2011

10 am to 12 pm – Panel II Justice for Whom? Rape and Comparative Criminal Procedure (Moot Court Room, Cardozo School of Law)

Panelists:

Taina Bien-Aimé (Lawyer and Consultant to Equality Now)
Pauline Delage (IRIS)
Emmanuel Saint-Martin (France 24)
Julie Suk (Cardozo School of Law)
James Q. Whitman (Yale Law School)

Moderator: Paris Baldacci (Cardozo School of Law)

This panel will be devoted to comparisons of French and U.S. criminal procedure as they were understood throughout the DSK scandal –and how they are actually used by feminist activists in both countries. Discussions will cover such issues as the (infamous) “perp walk,” understandings of “the presumption of innocence,” and the mechanisms by which a rape victim’s credibility is evaluated. How do the victim’s past sexual and immigration history play out in each justice system? Do American “rape shield” laws (and exceptions to them) have French analogues? How did prosecutorial discretion and adversarial fact investigation affect the DSK case? Might a rape victim fare better with judicial investigation of facts and/or limited prosecutorial discretion? How significant was the American “beyond a reasonable doubt” criminal standard in the prosecutors’ decision to dismiss the DSK case? What are the legal problems raised by the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn initiated by Tristane Banon’s complaint in France? How do the different relationships between civil and criminal complaints in the two legal systems affect the trajectory of a rape case?

1:30 to 4 pm – Panel III The Politics of Seduction: The Role of Sex in Democracy (La Maison Française of NYU)

Panelists:

Delphine Dulong (Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Eric Fassin (Ecole normale supérieure and IRIS)
Renée Kaplan (France 24)
Ruth Rubio Marín (European University Institute, Florence)
Joan Scott (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)

Moderator: Frédéric Viguier (NYU)

The DSK scandal is the latest chapter in an ongoing transatlantic debate about the politics of seduction. The French and American political cultures reflect different attitudes about the relevance of a politician’s sexual affairs to their ability to govern. The two legal cultures reflect different understandings of the line between seduction and sexual aggression. The concept of seduction might also inform the different concerns of French and American feminism, which have led to different policies to combat gender inequality. The United States has a robust law of sexual harassment, on the one hand, but France has laws requiring gender parity (known to Americans as “quotas”) in positions of political and social responsibility. Might the DSK moment narrow the gap between French and American understandings of seduction and gender relations in a democracy?

The Roslyn S. Silver ’27 Science lecture with Rebecca Jordan-Young Tuesday, October 11 6:30 PM James Room Barnard Hall, 4th Floor

Barnard College 116th Street and Broadway NYC

Join Rebecca Jordan-Young, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard, as she explores [...]]]> “Sex” is Not a Mechanism: Making “Sex-Specific Medicine” More Scientific

The Roslyn S. Silver ’27 Science lecture with Rebecca Jordan-Young
Tuesday, October 11
6:30 PM
James Room
Barnard Hall, 4th Floor

Barnard College
116th Street and Broadway
NYC

Join Rebecca Jordan-Young, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard, as she explores “sex-specific” medicine and reviews questions that could revolutionize the field.

Since the women’s health movement blossomed in the 1970s, there has been an ever-increasing trend toward examining all aspects of human health for evidence of sex differences. But some of the movement’s major achievements—such as a federal mandate to collect and analyze data by sex in all health research—may paradoxically turn out to be obstacles for understanding health differences between and within sex/gender groups. Building on her earlier work in Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences and using examples from both physical and mental health research, this year’s Silver Science Lecture by Rebecca Jordan-Young will review some basic questions about measurement in “sex-specific” medicine that could revolutionize the field and yield research and clinical practice that is actually far more specific and scientific than the current approach. What kind of variable is “sex,” and can it be measured separately from “gender”? When we have information on specific biological mechanisms underlying health differences, what does the variable “sex” add to our analyses?

Rebecca Jordan-Young received her A.B. in political science and women’s studies from Bryn Mawr College and her Doctorate in sociomedical sciences from Columbia University. A specialist in study design and measurement, she conducted epidemiological research on HIV/AIDS, urban health, and drug use before joining the Barnard faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department in 2004. She has been a Health Disparities Research Scholar supported by the NIH.

Sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, visit http://barnard.edu/events/sex-not-mechanism-making-sex-specific-medicine-more-scientific .

Youth, Gender and Sexuality: Contemporary Debates Wednesday 25 January 2012 09:00-18:00 East Midlands Conference Centre University of Nottingham, UK

Organisers:

Dr. Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, University of Nottingham, UK http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sociology/stafflookup/andrew.yip

Dr. Sarah-Jane Page, Durham University, UK http://www.dur.ac.uk/theology.religion/staff/profile/?id=9274

Aim:

This conference aims to bring together scholars in the social sciences [...]]]> CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

Youth, Gender and Sexuality: Contemporary Debates
Wednesday 25 January 2012
09:00-18:00
East Midlands Conference Centre
University of Nottingham, UK

Organisers:

Dr. Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip, University of Nottingham, UK http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/sociology/stafflookup/andrew.yip

Dr. Sarah-Jane Page, Durham University, UK http://www.dur.ac.uk/theology.religion/staff/profile/?id=9274

Aim:

This conference aims to bring together scholars in the social sciences and humanities who are doing cutting-edge theoretical and/or empirical research on young people’s lived experiences in relation to gender and/or sexuality in contemporary society.

This deliberately small-scale conference, involving no more than 15 participants, will provide a platform for in-depth and productive dialogue. The organisers intend to publish selected contributions as an edited volume or a special issue for a journal.

The conference is free. Refreshments and lunch will be provided on the day.

Abstract Submission:

Please submit, by 15 October 2011, an abstract of no more than 250 words, alongside a brief biographical note (max. 100 words) to Dr. Yip (andrew.yip[at]nottingham.ac.uk) and Dr. Page (sarah-jane.page[at]durham.ac.uk).

Preparation for Conference:

All participants must submit a fairly developed paper of 5000 words to the organisers by 5 January 2012, which will be distributed among participants in advance of the conference to facilitate in-depth discussion on the day. More guidelines will follow.

Following the conference, fully developed papers selected for publication must be submitted to the organisers by 26 March 2012.

Featured participants:

Lila Abu-Lughod Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor, Department of Anthropology and Institute for Research on Women and Gender Columbia University Director, Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference

Janet Jakobsen Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Women’s, Gender, [...]]]> CCASD Keywords: Interdisciplinary Roundtable Conversations: Movements
Wednesday, September 21st, 5-7pm
754 Schermerhorn Ext., Columbia University

Featured participants:

Lila Abu-Lughod
Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor, Department of Anthropology and
Institute for Research on Women and Gender
Columbia University
Director, Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference

Janet Jakobsen
Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Barnard College
Director, Barnard Center for Research on Women

Paul Scolieri
Assistant Professor of Dance
Barnard College

Dorian Warren
Assistant Professor of Political Science & Public Affairs
Columbia University

CCASD Keywords: Interdisciplinary Roundtable Conversations is a NEW series inspired by the innovative interdisciplinary scholarship promoted by the Center. The series draws participants together from a wide range of disciplinary homes in order to explore the various ways we think about fundamental critical/theoretical ideas and to generate new vocabularies and new methodologies.

For more on the Center and its projects, go to www.socialdifference.org

The School of Arts and Sciences invites applicants for four two-year postdoctoral teaching fellowships in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Fellows will teach one course per term. Eligibility is limited to applicants who will have received their Ph.D. within two years [...]]]> MELLON POSTDOCTORAL TEACHING FELLOWSHIPS
In the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences 2012-2014

The School of Arts and Sciences invites applicants for four two-year postdoctoral teaching fellowships in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Fellows will teach one course per term. Eligibility is limited to applicants who will have received their Ph.D. within two years prior to the time they begin their fellowship at Penn (August, 2010 or later). $49,440 stipend. Application deadline: November 30, 2011. We are especially seeking fellows in Anthropology (specializing in medical anthropology and Africa), English (specializing in Anglo Saxon language, literature, and culture), French (specializing in Renaissance literature and culture), Music History, and Sexuality Studies and Queer Theory (with some knowledge of Trans Studies).

For guidelines and application, see the School of Arts and Sciences website [http:www.sas.upenn.edu/deans-office/Mellon] or write:

Office of the Dean
School of Arts and Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
1 College Hall, Room 116
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6377

New Majorities II had a double task: First, the day-long forum continued an initiative launched at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW), and co-conceived by CSW director Kathleen [...]]]> New Majorities II:
A Cross-Country Duet on the State of Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Academy
New York University, 29 April 2011

New Majorities II had a double task: First, the day-long forum continued an initiative launched at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW), and co-conceived by CSW director Kathleen McHugh and NYU Professor Lisa Duggan, to respond to the uneven budget cuts affecting gender and sexuality departments—as well as other interdisciplinary programs, such as African-American and Latino/a Studies—nationwide. This conversation/duet began with a one-day conference hosted by UCLA in early March.  Second, the NYU forum was also a celebration of the 11th anniversary of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS). (As CSGS Director Ann Pellegrini mock protested, “why celebrate the even when you can celebrate the odd.”)

The linked conferences proactively, instead of defensively, addressed the attacks on interdisciplinary programs in gender and sexuality studies, ethnic studies, and related fields. These programs are often derided as “identity studies” departments, and this ideological attack along with the increased monetization of higher education has made these programs especially susceptible to budget cuts. In her framing remarks at the beginning of the day, Pellegrini, who, in addition to serving as CSGS director, is Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Religious Studies, acknowledged the necessity of learning to speak to administrators who control university budgets in the language of dollars and cents. But she also expressed the hope that the day’s conversation might generate a way of talking about the ongoing value of interdisciplinary projects like gender and sexuality studies and ethnic studies that was not reducible to economic inputs and outputs. She stressed that monetary value is not the only – nor even most important — measure of value.

The first panel, Gender and Sexuality Studies at NYU: History, Futures, Institutional Possibilities and Dilemmas, discussed CSGS’s history and the current challenges and possibilities for gender and sexuality studies at NYU. Rahma Abdulkadir, Research Fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi, kicked off the event with unfettered optimism by discussing the interdisciplinary possibilities of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYU-AD). NYU-AD is a research institution with an integrated liberal Arts and Sciences college with an international student body. In the nascient stages of its development, NYU-AD has only 19 majors. Although it currently offers only three classes in gender and sexualities, Abdulkadir believes that the open nature of the core areas of study, which includes “pathways of world literature,” as well as the eagerness of NYU-AD’s leadership to be in conversation with NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and CSGS, has significant space to expand its activities with a deeper incorporation of gender and sexuality-oriented research and pedagogy.

Next Carolyn Dinshaw, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and English at NYU, founding director of CSGS, and and self-professed “living archive,” addressed the changing nature of the center since 1999, when NYU was not yet the global institution it is today. At its inception, CSGS was linked to the Gender and Sexuality degree program in the College of Arts and Sciences, a union that gave the research group a medium to forge long bonds not amenable to the “one night stands” of CSGS events. The relationship between the Gender and Sexuality Studies program (GSS) and CSGS, Dinshaw explained, was multifold: the academic program provided an excellent foundation for the creation of a core audience for CSGS events while the political and pedagogical agenda of the Center helped influence the curriculum of the GSS program with the creation of elective courses like “Transgender histories, identities and politics.”

Don Kulick, who succeeded Dinshaw as CSGS Director and now a Professor of Comparative Human Development at University of Chicago, focused on two events in the Center’s history: CSGS’s shift from a Center linked to an academic program to its current “all university” status, and the permanent appointment of Robert Campbell as Associate Director. The former, Kulick, explained, meant that as a “provostial” center, CSGS represents the entire university and not just the Arts and Sciences. It was thus better positioned to forge connections across the university with faculty and programs doing work in gender and sexuality studies. Campbell’s appointment, preceded by a series of temporary terms, gave the Center a permanent foundation and continuity. Because of these transitions, CSGS didn’t have to legitimate itself as a scholarly institution and was able to popularize its evening programming to include speakers like Heather Boyle and Kate Bornstein, broadening its audience beyond academia.

Drawing from her multiple roles at NYU since 1998, e. Frances White, Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and SCA and former Vice Provost for Faculty Development, spoke to both the evolution of NYU’s Woman’s Studies Program into the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, now housed in SCA, and her role in increasing faculty diversity, which involved getting to know junior faculty of color in particular, and putting people together with similar concerns who were isolated in their respective disciplines.

The panel’s moderator Gayatri Gopinath, Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and Director of NYU’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, brought the conversation full circle by addressing the historical discussion of CSGS and SCA regarding the nuances of the notion of “value” in terms of NYU’s increased corporatization. Attending to this problematic project of NYU’s globalization, Gopinath reminded us of the New Majorities agenda by addressing how we can “create insurgencies within the structure” by theorizing how the interdisciplinarity itself interrupts the ways institutions are formed.

A lively discussion followed between the panelists and with the audience. There was a lot of attention, and concern, focused on the possible imperial dimensions of NYU’s global initiatives at Abu Dhabi and beyond. As was pointed out, NYU is not the only major U.S. university building global satellite campuses, and participants together asked about the political and economic implications of this expansion at this particular historical moment.

The second panel, New Paradigms, New Possibilities broadened the scope of discussion from an NYU focus to the fragile state of interdisciplinary programs nationally. The panel’s speakers came from a variety of institutions: public and private, both colleges and universities. They continued and deepened the project begun in the morning, namely how to articulate why what women’s studies, LGBTQ studies, and ethnic studies do matters at a time when the marketplace of ideas has been reduced to market value. Given the very real crises affecting particular programs, the panelists also sought to develop concrete and local strategies to combat the marginalization of “diversity” programs. There was a recognition that there is no one size fits all approach to the current situation.

Lisa Duggan introduced the panel by discussing New Majorities’ history, which began with a questionnaire asking about the states of various interdisciplinary programs as a way to use local case studies to talk about national situations. This served as an empirical anchor for the subsequent early March conference at UCLA whose aim was to create new knowledges to talk across programs and institutions.

The panel’s first speaker was Kathleen McHugh, Professor of English and the FTVD Critical Studies program at UCLA. McHugh presented how faculty demographics would be affected without the programs under attack by sharing the statistical research she compiled from hypothetical campus UCLX: without such programs, the number of white-male faculty would be unaffected; white-female employment would drop by almost 10%; and faculty of color would be reduced by about 50%. Riffing off David Letterman’s daily top ten list, McHugh also shared the top ten insights of New Majorities. These insights included: New Majorities is proactive rather than reactive; rethinks the marginal; moves being entrenched modes of thinking; and produces alternative structures of university governance.

Providing a perspective from Duke University, Jennifer D. Brody, the embodiment of interdisciplinarity (and over-extended academic labor) herself, is a Professor of African and African American Studies who also teaches Performance Studies, Gender/Sexuality Studies, and Visuality and Black Performance. Among other things, Brody addressed the issues of downsizing, noting in particular how funding for the arts has been slashed at various institutions. This affects diversity at our institutions in at least two ways: the creative arts offer an important site for university-community contact and have also traditionally provided a receptive space for women and people of color. But Brody also pointed to her own position at Duke, where she has a triple appointment, to ask what happens when one body is asked to perform diversity in multiple institutional sites? No body can do it, she said, but particular bodies are commonly asked to. Connecting back to McHugh’s presentation, Brody underscored the unequal division of labor that results when white women and women and men of color are asked to be the institutional face of diversity. Additionally, she pointed out that women and people of color are disproportionately hired in diversity programs, which allows public land grant universities (and she used to teach at one) to claim they are meeting various diversity targets or goals even as they are in fact continuing to segregate the university by knowledge division and department.

Next was Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at Temple University, who is “in belly of beast” of the academic budget crunch. At Temple, five programs—including Woman’s Studies, American Studies, Jewish studies—will be absorbed in the departments of Sociology, English, History, etc. The rationale for this administrative decision, Levitt explains, was fiscal; in other words, these programs are failing and not valuable. After the five programs hand over their autonomy to departments, the continued life of the programs would depend on the voluntary labor of an already over-extended staff, most of whom were highly vulnerable, non-tenured faculty. Levitt reminded us of an important oversight: this restructuring leaves little time for actual teaching and researching.

Following Levit was Janet R. Jakobsen, Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women. As a professor at a women’s college where Women’s Studies and feminist research are not currently under attack, Jakobsen spoke to the particular dangers of being on the receiving end of this capital flow. In the new neoliberal order, she argued, women and feminism were both now seen as good investments through which money might circulate along with imperialism. How would feminist work at U.S. colleges and universities be redefined in the light of this monetized “woman question”? Which kinds of research projects would be funded and supported and which, not? The way in which capital flows are set up to run through academic institutions, she maintained, can have serious dangers for other progressive institutions, like poorly funded activist organizations. Jakobsen’s talk was a warning call against such complicity that marginalizes other projects of resistance.

Licia Fiol-Matta, Professor of Latin American & Puerto Rican Studies at Lehman College, CUNY, concluded the panel with an example of the way diversity studies play out in specific institutional sites and in relation to local demographics. At Lehman, Fiol-Matta explains, there is a radical disconnect between the faculty, which consists of mostly of white, relatively wealthy males, and the student body, primarily composed of women of color. Fiol-Matta revealed another paradox: while one would think this population would be receptive to interdisciplinary, diversity-oriented thinking, they succumb to the extreme conservativism expressed through the business model of education, where the student is the consumer and goods are recognizable. As a result, this population is entrenched in an aspirational model toward insertion into the capitalist structure that equates “making it” with “making money.” But Fiol-Matta stressed the complexity of Lehman’s particular students’ identification with this aspirational model, suggesting that it could be seen as a vehicle of Americanization and racialized assimilation. In other words: the consumer-citizen economic circuit works differently, and demands different things, of different student bodies. As scholars of diversity, how do we reckon with this concrete situation?

In (im)proper interdisciplinary fashion, the conference closed with a performance party to celebrate the 11th anniversary of the Center. The performance party – entitled Gender and Sexuality: A Musical Revue – was produced by musician Viva DeConcini and held at a local music venue, the Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge. The cabaret-style event was emceed by Jennifer Miller Circus Amok founder and Associate Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at Pratt Institute. About 200 people packed the downstairs gallery space for the musical celebrations. The audience was “schooled” in gender and sexuality by: Karen Finley, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Geo Wyeth, Glenn Marla, Neal Medlyn,burlesque performers Darlinda Just Darlinda and Coco Lectric, and Jomama Jones. There was even a surprise musical performance by CSGS director Ann Pellegrini.

If Gender and Sexuality: A Musical Revue showcased the serious play of gender and sexuality studies, it also offered a welcome respite from – and reenergizing bounce to confront – the crises discussed during the day.

–Krista Miranda

Krista Miranda is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at New York University and the Book Reviews Editor for Woman and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. Her prior graduate work includes an MA in Humanities and Social Thought with a concentration in Gender Politics and an MA in Writing and Publishing.

JULIE PASSANANTE ELMAN New York University Dept of Social & Cultural Analysis

ROBERT MCRUER George Washington University Dept of English

April 22, 2011 4:00-6:00PM NYU Dept of Social & Cultural Analysis 20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor NY, NY 10003

In 2009, [...]]]> Gifts of Mobility: Disability Exceptionalism, Queerness & Rehabilitation in the Emergent Global Order

JULIE PASSANANTE ELMAN
New York University
Dept of Social & Cultural Analysis

ROBERT MCRUER
George Washington University
Dept of English

April 22, 2011
4:00-6:00PM
NYU Dept of Social & Cultural Analysis
20 Cooper Square, 4th Floor
NY, NY 10003

In 2009, Joni and Friends International Disability Center (IDC) celebrated its 30th anniversary of “ministry … to people with disabilities and their families across the US and the world.” Founded by Joni Eareckson Tada, who became disabled after a 1967 diving accident, IDC has participated in various forms of transnational evangelical/disability activism, including two seemingly-disparate contemporaneous initiatives: 1) “Wheels for the World,” a global wheelchair missionary outreach program that distributes donated wheelchairs throughout Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, and the Middle East and 2) the Manhattan Declaration, a globally-disseminated Christian manifesto, which avows support for pro-life, traditional marriage, and religious freedom and condones civil disobedience against laws regarding abortion and gay marriage. It emerged at the same moment that Uganda advanced its Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which proposed lifetime imprisonment or the death penalty for gay men and lesbians. Recent work in both disability and human rights scholarship has suggested a model of shared vulnerability and interdependence as spaces of possibility for a more expansive vision of human rights and global disability activism in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. However, our work argues that a new discursive mobility of a seemingly-innocent “interdependency” can occlude the ways in which relations of power in the new world order are currently being reconfigured around rehabilitation, incarceration, and necropolitics that targets unruly populations for elimination. We examine IDC to spotlight how certain forms of transnational disability activism—along with the desire for new understandings of disability and disability identity—can be problematically articulated in and through emergent forms of homophobia and neocolonialism. This event is co-sponsored by The NYU Council for the Study of Disability, The Center for Religion & Media, the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Program in American Studies.

April 29, Friday