Conference To Focus on Disability & Citizenship

March 3, 2011 - On March 31-April 1, “Civil Disabilities: Theory, Citizenship, and the Body,” an interdisciplinary conference on citizenship and disability, will be held on the Penn campus. 

The conference will feature leading disability scholars who will discuss topics ranging from the history of disability and citizenship in the U.S., to civic fitness and assistive technologies, to disability and sexuality. 

Says Penn GSE Professor Sigal Ben-Porath, one of the conference organizers, “The conference will feature scholars who are recognized as the key leaders in disability studies, and main figures from a number of fields working on issues of disability in the U.S. and abroad.” 

Along with Ben-Porath, the conference organizers are Nancy Hirschmann, the R. Jean Brownlee Endowed Term Professor in Penn’s Political Science department, Beth Linker, a professor in the department of History and Sociology of Science, and Mara Mills, a professor at New York University. 

The conference, which will take place on the Penn campus in Stiteler Hall, is made possible by a Mellon Cross-Cultural Contacts Conference Grant, the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, Penn GSE, the School of Medicine, the Department of the History and Sociology of Science, the Department of Political Science, the Annenberg School of Communication, the School of Law, the Department of English, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center, the Cinema Studies Program, the Department of History, the Center for Bioethics, the Women’s Studies Program, the Bates School of Nursing, the Penn Humanities Forum, the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship and Constitutionalism, the Department of Anthropology, and the Office of the Provost.

To learn more about this conference and for registration information, click here.

Media contact: Jill DiSanto-Haines / jdisanto@upenn.edu / 215-898-4820