The Discourse of Disability Conference/ Congreso Otras Habilidades
The Discourse of Disability Conference/ Congreso Otras Habilidades
3-6 March 1993
University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
Ongoing events: Monday, 22 February - Sunday, 7 March
- Book exhibit, Biblioteca General, UPR-RUM
- Film Festival, Chardón 317
- Thursday, 25 February 7:00 p.m.: "Proof"
- Friday, 26 February, 7:00 pm.: "My Left Foot"
- Saturday, 27 February 5:00 p.m."Children of a Lesser God"
- Sunday, 28 February, 5:00 pm.: "Born on the Fourth of July"
- Monday, 1 March 7:00 p.m.: "Waterdance"
- Tuesday, 2 March 4:00 p.m.: New Zealand documentaries "Doc," "Miles Turns 21," "See
What I Mean"
Tuesday, 2 March:
Site: Edificio Enfermería, Patio
7-9 pm Welcoming Reception
Greetings by Nandita Batra and Pierre-Etienne Cudmore
Conference Co-Directors
Wednesday, 3 March:
Site: Edificio Enfermería
8:00-8:30 Continental Breakfast
8:30-9:00 On-Site Conference Registration
9:00-9:15 Greetings: Alejandro Ruiz, Chancellor, UPR-Mayagüez
Olga Hernández, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
9:30-11:00 Plenary Session A
Introduction: Mary Martin-Betancourt, Director, Department of English, UPR-Mayagüez
Keynote Speaker: Ved Mehta
11:00-11:15 Coffee Break
11:15-12:15 Session I - Representations of Disability: Historical Perspectives
Moderator: Nandita Batra
- Barbara Bergquist (University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras): "From Fear to
Acceptance: The Physically Disabled Come Out of the Closet"
- Harlan Hahn (University of Southern California): "Toward an Aesthetics of Disability: Classical
and Evolving Western Images"
12:15-1:30 Lunch
1:30-4:00 Session II - The Differently Abled and the Aesthetic Experience
Moderator: Héctor Huyke
- Margaret Bruzelius (Yale University): "'An Altered World': Abilities and
Disabilities, Drawings by Marcy Hermansader"
- Jeffrey Folks (Tennessee Wesleyan College): "'The Enduring Chill': Physical
Disability in Flannery O'Connor's Everything Must Converge
- Mariá Solá (University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez): "Sobre la piel y el lienzo
su cocienca: lo que se ve ye se siente en la pintura de Jeannette Blasini"
- Ellen Whittier (SUNY Buffalo): "Physical Disability as Creative Dynamic in Lord
Byron'sThe Deformed Transformed
- Loreina Santos (University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez): "'Obelisco, isosa madre poesía' o el
materialismo místico de Jorge Luis Morales"
4:00-4:15 Coffee Break
4:15-5:30 Session III - Representations of Disability in Film
Moderator: Mary Leonard
- John Carbutt (University of Auckland, New Zealand): "Camouflage and Compromise: The
Politics of Filming Disability in New Zealand"
- Susan Crutchfield (University of Michigan): "Take Me to Your Cinema:
Blind/Sighted Discourse(s) in Narrative Film"
8:30-10:00 Performance of Gillian Plowman's 'Cecily' by University of Puerto Rico students,
directed by Darnyd Ortiz, at Teatrito auditorium, Chardón 122
Thursday, 4 March:
Site: Edificio Enfermería
8:00-8:30 Continental Breakfast
8:30-10:30 Session IV - Representations of Disability: Deconstructing Stereotypes
Moderator: Fabio Farsi
- Maura Brady (University of Iowa): "Artists and Surgeons: The Physically
Disabled Subject in Dunn's Geek Love
- Karen Gutman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): "Butterflies are
Free: Leonard Gershe and the Discourse and Dramatization of Disability"
- David Richman (University of New Hampshire): "Yeats and the Sightless Vision"
- Nancy Wurzel (University of South Carolina): "Willa Cather's Symbolic
Representations of Disability: Lucy Gayheart and Sapphira and the Slave
Girl
10:30-10:45 Coffee Break
10:45-12:00 Session V - Cinema and the Perfect Body
Moderator: Pierre-Etienne Cudmore
- Rus Cooper-Dowda (World Institute on Disability)
"'...So...like, the Beast's Castle is Like the Hospital Where Disabled People Have to Stay,
Right?'...or When Disney Meets the Independent Living Movement"
- Rebecca Bell-Meterau (Southwest Texas State University): "Film Images: The
Un-Perfect Body"
12:00-1:15 Lunch
1:15-3:45 Session VI - Gender and Disability
Moderator: Elizabeth Dayton
- Lynda Hoffman-Jeep (University of Chicago): "Female Disability Portrayed as
Double: Beatriz Guido's Usurpación and Carmen Naranjo's Ondina
- Cindy LaCom (University of Oregon): "It is more than Lame: Physical Disability
in Charlotte Yonge's The Clever Woman of the Family and Anthony Trollope's
Barchester Towers
- Brenda Robert (Montgomery College): "Disabled Women Writers: In Search of a
Text of Their Own"
- Rosemarie Thomson (Howard University): "How to Represent a 'Powerful Woman': The
Disabled Figure in Twentieth-Century Novels of African-American Identity"
- Maria Anastasopolou (University of Athens, Greece): "The Mutilation of the Male: The
Discourse of Disability in Nineteenth-Century Women's Novels"
3:45-4:00 Coffee Break
4:00-5:30 Session VII - Language and the Discourse of Disability
Moderator: Anthony Hunt
- H.-Dirksen Bauman (SUNY Binghampton): "Dancing Hands: Toward a Poetics of American Sign Language Poetry"
- Tess Lloyd (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): "The Wild Child as
Metaphor in Melville's Pierre
- Patrick McDonagh (Concordia University): "Tongue-Tied?: Cerebral Palsy and the
Politics of Resistance"
8:30-10:00 pm: Site: Teatro Yagüez, Calle Mendez Vigo
Violin Concert by Henry Hutchinson Negrón and Luz Negrón de Hutchinson
10:00 pm: Site: Mayagüez Town Hall
Reception hosted by the Honorable José Guillermo Rodríguez, Mayor of the City of
Mayagüez
Friday, 5 March
Site: Edificio Enfermería
8:00-8:30 Continental Breakfast
8:30-10:00 Session VIII - Disability as Subversion
Moderator: Magda Graniela
- Irene Mizrahi (Boston College): "La ceguera en el teatro español del siglo XX"
- Scott Pollard (Christopher Newport University): "Disability and Subjectivity in
José Donoso's El obsceno pájaro de la noche
- Victoria Cox (University of Maryland): "Otro cuerpo y otra sociedad proponen
los seres con 'diferentes' capacidades en la novela: El obsceno pájaro de
la noche
10:00-10:15 Coffee Break
10:15-11:45 Plenary Session B
Introduction: Héctor Huyke, Director, Department of Humanities, UPR-Mayagüez
Keynote Speaker: Sotero Rivera Aviles
11:45-1:00 Lunch
1:00-3:00 Session IX - Disability as Metaphor
Moderator: Halley Sánchez
- Marcy Epstein (University of Michigan) "Dis/ability as Dis/course: Eating Dis/order and the
Challenged Culture "
- Juliette Parnell-Smith (University of Nebraska): "Blindness: A Physical or
Perceptual Characteristic? A Study of André Gide's Novellas"
- Eileen Howe (Charleston College): Manuel Puig y su discurso en la novela
Eternal Curse on the Reader of these Pages
- Chris Bullock (University of Alberta, Canada): Reflections on Blindness in
Raymond Carver's "Cathedral"
3:003:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:45 Session X - Disability and Sexuality
Moderator: Ursula Acosta
- John Woodcock (Indiana University): "Sexual Loss and Personal Identity in Two
Films: 'Whose Life is it Anyway?' and 'Born on the Fourth of July'
Martha Stoddard Holmes (University of Colorado, Boulder): "'My Old Delightful
Sensation': Blindness and Sexuality in Wilkie Collins' Poor Miss Finch"
- Katie Krohn (Texas A & M University): "Images of Disability on Living Canvas: Men who Cross-Dress as Disabled Women"
Saturday, 6 March:
Site: Edificio Enfermeria
8:00-8:30 Continental Breakfast
8:30-10:00 Session XI - The Discourse of Disability and the Body Politic
Moderator: Alfonso Latoni
- Alberto Traldi (University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez): "El sordomudo especial de
Ignazio Silone"
- Jozef Modzelewski (College of Charleston): "Physical and Psychological Disability: Blessing
or Curse? Libuse Monikova's Pavane für eine verstorbene Infantin"
- Lou Thompson (Texas Woman's University): The Wounds of War: Literary Representations of Disabled Vietnam Veterans"
10:00-10:15 Coffee Break
10:15-12:15 Session XII - Towards a Poetics of Disability
- Kristina Chew (Yale University): "Bodily Loss: Anorexia and Amputation"
- David Mitchell (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): "The Cultural (Dis)Logic of
Disability"
- Alain Vizier (Tulane University): "Artaud's Letters to Rivière: Disability and
Subversion"
- Ann Cooper Albright (Oberlin College)
"Moving Across Difference: Dance and Disability"
12:15: Visit to Aguada beach
Beach lunch at the Shady Palm, Aguada
Farewell Remarks by Conference Co-Directors
The conference co-directors, Nandita Batra and Pierre-Etienne Cudmore, wish to thank the
following people for helping to organize the conference.
Committees:
Computer Image and Design: David Dayton and José Irizarry
Consulting: David Dayton, Héctor Huyke, Mary Martin-Betancourt, Roberta Orlandini
Exhibits: Fabio Farsi, Kathleen Ferracane, Jorge Gómez, Beverly Nieves, Barbara Strodt
Film & Video: Mary Leonard, Alberto Traldi
Funding & Finance: Gerardo Ferracane, Pratima Oltikar, Roberto Rolman, James Ruzicka,
Robert Sherwin
Interpretation & Special Facilities: Peter Miletta, Laura Pawle
Menu: Ann Murdaugh, Aida Rosado, Raquel Chamberlain Solórzano
Publicity: Lilia Dapaz, Darnyd Ortiz
Registration: Sonia Crespo, Roberto López, Jeanette Lugo, Carmen Maldonado, Nidia Tirú
Sites: Roberta Orlandini, Ellen Pratt, Ismael Rivera
Social Activities: Peter Miletta, Ellen Pratt, Sandra Ríos, Ismael Rivera
Student: Rima Brusi, Elías Lorenzo, Ketty Nazario, Linda Quiles, Arturo Rodríguez
Moderators
Ursula Acosta, Elizabeth Dayton, Fabio Farsi, Magda Graniela, Anthony Hunt,
Héctor Huyke, Alfonso Latoni, Halley Sánchez,
Our thanks also to
Edithdaly Martell and Kathy Jorge Seda for their secretarial assistance
English Department Student Association
Humanitites Department Student Association
René Ramírez, Director of the Office of Social and Cultural Activities, UPR-M.
This conference was made possible by the generous contributions of the following individuals,
associations, and corporations:
Alejandro Ruiz, Chancellor,
Olga Hernández, Dean of Arts and Sciences,
The Department of English and the Department of Humanities,
The Office of International Programs,
University of Puerto of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez
Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades
The Honorable José Guillermo Rodriguéz, Mayor of the City of Mayagüez
Fernando Bayrón Toro, President of the Municipal Assembly of Mayagüez
Esther Caro, Director, Asociación Mayagüezana de Personas con Impedimentos, Inc.
The Mayagüez Hilton
Ballester Hermanos, Inc.
Tara Sinha McCann-Ericson
Star Kist Caribe, Inc.
The Lazy Parrot, Rincón
Arrangements for the appearance of Mr. Ved Mehta were made through Program Corporation of
America, White Plains, New York.
Logo designed by