If Body: Ableism and Disability Studies in Transnational Anglophone Contexts

This seminar mobilizes disability, queer, trans and feminist studies to think about how (our) bodies can interrupt social norms and expectations. We consider how bodies are disciplined and controlled, how they come to conform and eventually reenact ableist normativity, and how they can also function as sites of resistance and transgression. Drawing from Riva Lehrer's painting "If Body: Riva and Zora in Middle Age" invoked by Lauren Berlant in Cruel Optimism (2011), this seminar seeks to do things with dis/ability and dis/abled bodies to challenge everyday ableism as well as ableist systems and infrastructures.