Becoming Citizens: The Historical Construction of Intellectual Disability

Griffith Abilities Research Program

in partnership withThe Disability Studies Research Concentration,School of Human Services and SocialWork

is pleased to invite you to a public workshop

Becoming Citizens: The Historical Construction of Intellectual Disability 

at 9am to 4.30pm on Thursday14^th May 2009

Venue: TBA (Brisbane area)

 

This public workshop is aimed at people with disabilities, families, professionals and interested others and will provide an accessible history of intellectual disability, tracing key themes in the popular discourse, policy, and services history and their impact on the lives of individuals and families.

Please register your interest in attending by contacting:

Natalie Clements  07 3382 1134      N.Clements@gu.edu.au 

Speakers:

Christopher Goodey is currently Assistant Director of the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education. He has collaborated with the UK Health Commission and representatives of people labelled with intellectual disabilities to desegregate institutions and government services.  Christopher has published on the history of intellectual disability in leading journals across a wide range of disciplines.

Tim Stainton is Professor of Disability Policy, Practice and Theory at the University of British Columbia and currently the Sir Allan Sewell Visiting Professor at the School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith University.  He has published widely on the history of intellectual disability, and is currently completing a manuscript for Palgrave Macmillan on the historical construction of intellectual disability.

Lynn Rose has been at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, since 1995. Dr. Rose's specialties are ancient history and disability studies. Along with several articles, chapters, and encyclopedia entries, she has published one book, The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece (2003). She was awarded a Mary E. Switzer Distinguished Fellowship for 2003-2004 to support her research project on intellectual disability in ancient Greece. She spent the year with the Institute for Greek and Latin Language and Literature at the University of Halle-Wittenberg.

Patrick McDonagh teaches in the Department of English at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research explores the relationship between cultural representations, philosophical and medical notions of intelligence and its lack, and social policies related to people identified as having intellectual disabilities. Most recently, he is the author of Idiocy: A Cultural History (Liverpool UP, 2008). He is currently working on two major projects: the first is an annotated collection of new translations of historical documents relating to the wild boy of Aveyron, which would include writings by Philippe Pinel, Joseph-Marie de Gérando and Jean Itard; the second is a popular history tracking the growth and permutations of the idea of intelligence.

Lee-Ann Monk is a research associate at the University of Melbourne, working on an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded project on the history of psychiatric institutionalisation and community care in Australia 1830s – 1990s.  Her research interests include the history of mental health and intellectual disability and the social and cultural history of work in nineteenth and twentieth century Australia.  In 2005, she was awarded an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Industry), to research and write the history of Kew Cottages. She is currently completing a history of the Cottages from their establishment in 1887 as Australia’s first specialised institution for people with intellectual disability to their recent closure.  Her history of nineteenth-century ‘lunatic’ asylum attendants Attending Madness: At Work in the Australian Colonial Asylum was published in 2008 as a volume in Clio Medica: The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine.

Chair: Professor Lesley Chenoweth