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<TITLE>Reminder: GCS Seminar today, Technologies of disability</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>The Department of Gender and Cultural Studies Seminar Series for Semester 2 begins this afternoon at 2pm. All are welcome.<BR>
The full schedule for the semester's seminars is attached to this message. Please feel free to distribute!<BR>
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<B>Today’s theme:<BR>
</B>'Technologies of disability' organised by Anna Hickey-Moody.<BR>
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<B>Details: <BR>
</B>In ‘The History of Sexuality’ Foucault introduces his notion of bio-power as a technology of social control that has developed with capitalism. He states: “bio-power was without question an indispensible element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production” (1978, pp. 140-1). As disability studies scholars such as Tremain (2005), Goggin and Newell (2005), Corker and Shakespeare (2002) and many others have shown, the concept of bio-power informs contemporary understandings of disability in at least two ways. Firstly, as a mode of governance that supports capitalism, bio-power has produced the disabled body as being without great financial value because it can be difficult to insert into the ‘machinery’ of capitalist production. Secondly, as a result of the former process, material technological developments for users with disabilities have largely been limited to rudimentary ‘assistive technologies’ that do not extend, for example, to easily accessible mobile phones or Second Life interfaces. This seminar approaches the notion of ‘technologies of disability’ from this understanding of a technology as an act of thought (subjectivation) and a material craft. The speakers explore physical technologies such as film, virtual worlds and other communication mediums through modes of thought that are intended to open up bio-political conceptualizations of disability.<BR>
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<B>Speakers:</B> <BR>
<I>Professor Gerard Goggin</I>: Gerard is Professor of Digital Communication, and Deputy Director of the new Centre for Social Research in Journalism and Communication, University of New South Wales. He has research expertise in disability research and policy, especially relating to technology and media. With Christopher Newell he is author of Digital Disability (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and many other papers on technology, disability, and society. Their second book Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid (University of New South Press, 2005) was awarded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Arts Non-Fiction prize.<BR>
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<I>Dr Densie Wood</I>: Denise is the Program Director and Senior Lecturer responsible for the Bachelor of Media Arts program at the University of South Australia. She has extensive experience in the multimedia industry as both a producer and educator. Denise was a founding member of the Information Policy Advisory Council established by the Communications Minister in 1996 and the Director of an organisation specialising in multimedia production and training for young people with disabilities, from 1994 to 1997. Her research now combines new media and disability studies with a focus on Web .2 and Second Life.<BR>
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<I>Dr Anna Hickey-Moody</I>: Anna is a lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She is interested in how we can re-frame questions of social justice, and as such, her research intersects across cultural studies of youth, disability and gender. Anna is interested in how bodies marked as somehow being ‘disadvantaged’ might be thought in new ways. She is co-author of Masculinity beyond the Metropolis (Palgrave, 2006), co-editor of Deleuzian Encounters (Palgrave, 2007) and author of Unimaginable Bodies (Sense, 2009).<BR>
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<B>Location:<BR>
</B>All seminars will be held in the New Law School Seminar Room 442, on Eastern Avenue. <BR>
This is the glass building half way along on your right if entering campus from City Road Main Gate. <BR>
See the map here: <a href="http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml">http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml</a> <a href="http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml"><http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml></a> <BR>
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<B>Time:<BR>
</B>Seminars run from 2pm-4pm with afternoon tea half way through.<BR>
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<B>Enquiries:<BR>
</B>mgregg@usyd.edu.au or phone 0408 599 359<BR>
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<B>Works cited<BR>
</B>Corker, M. and Shakespeare, T. (2002) Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Continuum, UK.<BR>
Foucault, M. (1978) The History of Sexuality: Volume One. Penguin Books, England.<BR>
Goggin, G. and Newell, C. (2005) ‘Foucault on the phone: Disability and the mobility of government’. Foucault and the Government of Disability. Ed. Tremain, S. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Pp. 261-277.<BR>
Tremain, S. Ed (2005) Foucault and the Government of Disability. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.<BR>
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