A talk by Stephanie Kerschbaum, associate professor of English at the University of Washington.
How do we come to notice disability? Where and when and how does disability take shape all around us on an everyday basis? In this talk, Stephanie Kerschbaum will introduce the concept of dis-attention. Dis-attention is a made-up word, intentionally awkward and clunky, with an italicized dis and a hyphen between dis and attention. Kerschbaum argues that this word can help us unpack the ways that disability is simultaneously hyper-noticeable and imperceptible, often at the same time. The talk will center on a collection of more than 50 yellow diamond-shaped road signs that point to disability in various ways to help illustrate dis-attention as well as invite attendees to consider what signs of disability are operating in their own experiences.
Stephanie Kerschbaum is associate professor of English at the University of Washington, where she also directs the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. She is most recently the author of Signs of Disability, available open-access and in print from New York University Press and from which her talk is drawn. In addition to thinking a lot about accessibility and care within institutions, she is trying to spend as much time outdoors in Seattle as possible because she is still blown away at living near mountains and large bodies of water.
ASL interpretation will be provided.
Sponsored by the Disability Studies Collective Mellon Seed Grant and the Haverford Writing Program.
