NONSITE || A Talk with Michael Davidson and Sue Schweik

As a continuation of the Nonsite Collective’s discussions of the poetics of disability/disablement, and the fourth in a series of events in the Aesthetics as Somatic Practice series, we are pleased to host an afternoon of talks and discussion with Michael Davidson and Sue Schweik:

June 6, 2009, 3:30pm
935 Natoma, btwn 10th and 11th,
and btwn Mission and Howard
Close to Van Ness and Market (Muni)

or Civic Center BART

(Event space is wheelchair accessible. On-site bathrooms are accessible to wheelchair entry but not fully ADA-compliant due to lack of handrails).

For a range of resources, discussions, keywords, or to participate in the developing Aesthetics as Somatic Practice collaborative inquiry, please check out the workbook page.

For texts and resources suggested as background to this event, direct your browser to the event resource page.

Michael Davidson is Distinguished Professor of American Literature at the University of California, San Diego, with research interests including Modern Poetry, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Disability Studies. Davidson's scholarly and critical publications include:

• Concerto for the Left Hand: Disability and the Defamiliar Body. (University of Michigan Press, 2008).
• Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics. (University of Chicago Press, 2003).
• Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word. (University of California Press, 1997).
• The San Francisco Renaissance: Poetics and Community at Mid-Century. (Cambridge University Press, 1989).

As a poet, Davidson's publications span nearly three decades of activity, with highlights including:

• The Arcades. (O Books, 1998).
• Leningrad: American Writers in the Soviet Union. (with Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten). (Mercury House, 1991).
• Post Hoc. (Avenue B, 1990).

Davidson's talk on June 6th will range over some of the concerns presented in ''Concerto for the Left Hand,'' and will also introduce a new project under the working title ''Pregnant Men: Modernism, Disability, and Biofuturity."

Sue Schweik is Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. A new book, The Ugly Laws, forthcoming from NYU Press, presents a social and cultural history of an ordinance adopted by many American cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The law prohibited "diseased," "maimed," and "deformed" people from exposing themselves to public view. She is currently completing a book tentatively titled Local Characters: Race and Disability in the American Archive. Other recent publications and presentations include:

• "Disability Politics and American Literary History: Some Suggestions," in American Literary History, Spring/Summer 2008
• "Disability, Mendicancy, Speech and the Law," in Narrative, 2007
• "Josephine Miles' Crip(t) Words: Gender, Disability, Doll," in Journal of Literary Disability, 1.1. 2007
• “The Voice of ‘Reason’,” Public Culture ( Fall 2001) in special issue entitled The Critical Limits of Embodiment: Reflections on Disability Criticism.
• “Disability Studies Meets Susan Sontag,” invited panelist, Columbia University, March 2004
• “Doing/Not Doing Disability Studies at Berkeley,” invited lecture at Disability Studies in the University, the first national conference on Disability in the Humanities, sponsored by the MLA, Emory University March 2004
• “Talking About Assisted Suicide,” invited lecture, Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State University, March 2003
• “The Ugly Laws of Disability Studies,” invited lecture, Feminist Scholars Series, Penn State, March 2003