Date: 19th February 2018 from 2–5pm
Location: Centre for Medical Humanities in the School of English (6–10 Cavendish Road), University of Leeds
The first meeting of ‘“Going to the Dogs?” A Workshop Series on Research at the Intersection of Disability and Animal Studies’ will take place at the Centre for Medical Humanities in the School of English (6–10 Cavendish Road) at the University of Leeds on Monday 19 February 2018 from 2–5pm.
Responding to recent scholarship that places disability and animal studies in critical dialogue (see, for instance, Sunaura Taylor’s new book and the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies recent call for papers), this workshop will bring together three Leeds-based scholars, who will each approach the intersection of disability and animal studies from a different disciplinary and methodological perspective. The session will feature Karen Sayer, who is a Professor of Social and Cultural History at Leeds Trinity University; Sunny Harrison, who is a PhD candidate in the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds; and Leah Burch, who is a PhD candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Respectively, their talks will cover the following topics:
- Models of utility, disability, and occupational health in later medieval horse medicine.
- The conceptualisation of disabled human labourers relative to conceptualisations of farm animals in nineteenth-century agriculture.
- Instances of disability being animalised in contemporary hate speech.
Each talk will be followed by time for questions, and the workshop will end with a roundtable discussion about the ethical and methodological challenges of working on themes of disability and animals together. Tea and coffee will be provided.
Please note that there will be a follow-up artistic event (starring the disability artist Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen) at The Tetley during the evening on Thursday 12 April 2018 and a second workshop (featuring Andy Flack, Justyna Włodarczyk, Neil Pemberton, and Rachael Gillibrand) on Friday 13 April 2018.
If you have any questions or would like to book a place at the workshop in Feb—for FREE—please email the organiser, Dr Ryan Sweet (including details of anything that can be done to ensure that the event is accessible for you). Dr Sweet’s email address is R.C.Sweet@leeds.ac.uk.