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Flyer for event with two black and white images. First is a photo of a crowd moving past a building, at the center are two wheelchair users. The other image is an abstract drawing of three bodies.

Emerging Ideas

Civilizing Disability Society and Sacrificial Limbs Book Talks

Thursday, March 5, 3:00-5:00pm

Charles E. Young Research Library, Presentation Room

Click here to RSVP

Join us for a conversation with Professor Salih Can Açiksöz (UCLA) and Professor Stephen J. Meyers (University of Washington), who have both recently published books on disability.

Sacrificial Limbs chronicles the everyday lives and political activism of disabled veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish war, one of the most volatile conflicts in the Middle East. Through nuanced ethnographic portraits, Salih Can Açiksöz examines how veterans’ experiences of war and disability are closely linked to class, gender, and ultimately the embrace of ultranationalist right-wing politics. Bringing the reader into military hospitals, commemorations, political demonstrations, and veterans’ everyday spaces of care, intimacy, and activism, Sacrificial Limbs provides a vivid analysis of the multiple and sometimes contradictory forces that fashion veterans’ bodies, political subjectivities, and communities.

In Civilizing Disability Society, Stephen Meyers examines a clash of values between local disability groups in Nicaragua and international NGO’s as the latter pressure locals to adopt the mission and organizational models outlined in the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  Valuing self-help and interdependence (solidaridad), local organizations are given a stark choice: ingratiate themselves to international actors, but alienate their members, or reject the idea of disability human rights altogether and give up the possibility of receiving assistance from abroad.  Through deep ethnographic work, Meyers records the tension and aftermath of these encounters.

The experiences and lessons learned will be valuable to anyone engaged in gender identity, disability rights work, international development, and global public health efforts.

Please note that in the spirit of inclusivity we ask that this be a fragrance free event.  The library is wheelchair accessible.  Please contact Kyle McJunkin by February 27 at kmcjunkin@ph.ucla.edu for any additional accommodations.

Mar 05, 2020

Charles E. Young Research Library, Presentation Room

3:00-5:00pm

Register
This event date has passed so registration is now closed

Mar 05, 2020

Charles E. Young Research Library, Presentation Room

3:00-5:00pm

Register
This event date has passed so registration is now closed