University of Michigan Professor Tobin Siebers will lecture on “The Mad Women Project: Disability and the Aesthetics of Human Disqualification,”via Skype on Tuesday, October 25, at 7:30 p.m., in Scripps College’s Performing Arts Center, Garrison Theater. This event is free and open to the public.
Professor Sieber will discuss how aesthetics and appearance attribute to labeling disabled people as inferior and women, especially, as “crazy.” He will draw from several of Korean photographer Park Young-Sook’s photographs of women with mental disabilities.
“Park’s work is an extensive investigation of what it means for a woman to be called ‘crazy’ in patriarchal society. My lecture will examine many of her photographs with the goal of asking how Park’s vision of mental disability might contribute to feminist theory, and I will contrast her work to the work of Cindy Sherman, the photographer perhaps best recognized in the West as a commentator on the dangers of sexism. The dialogue between Park and Sherman yields a new vision of what female madness means,” says Siebers.
Siebers is professor of English and art and design at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been selected for fellowships by the Michigan Society of Fellows, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for the Humanities. His principal contributions to literary and cultural criticism have been in disability studies. Sieber has had several books published, most recently Disability Theory and Disability Aesthetics. His works in progress include essays on disability aesthetics and the representation of madness.
The lecture will be followed by a discussion with the audience.
The Scripps College Humanities Institute Fall 2011 program: “Performing the Body Politic: Transgressions, Interventions, and Expressive Culture.” How does the exuberance and efficacy of performance invite new ideas about the body in its deconstructions and reconstructions? The seminar will explore these and other questions with scholars, performers, and activists in diverse fields through their lecture, film, and performance series. For more information, please contact the Humanities Institute at (909) 621-8237 or visit their website.