"Transforming bodies: New directions in medical humanities and cultural disability" to be held at Liverpool, Birmingham and Leeds from November 2010-May 2011 (360G-Wellcome-093721_Z_10_Z)

Under the emerging banner of Cultural Disability Studies and with the specific focus of the 'transforming body', the proposed seminars seek to establish a dialogue between scholars working in the Arts and Humanities (especially on issues of representation, cultural history and ethics) and Health Sciences, medical praCtitioners, and those involved in disability advocacy and community work. Narrative- and representation-based methodologies are central to humanities-based Disability Studies as well as being at the forefront of recent innovative scholarship in the Medical Humanities. These seminars will seek to develop productive conversations between these perspectives, engaging with a range of academic disciplines as well as medical and health practice. The series focuses on three pivotal disability issues: prosthesis, prenatal screening, and ageing. Around each of these, priorities in medical advancement, healthcare and technological innovation combine with concerns about personhood, lived experience, ethics and activism. The objective is to move towards a genuinely multiand trans-disciplinary approach to theorising disability and culture, and to locate cultural disability scholarship within methods and arguments stemming from practice-based approaches. Equally, the seminars will suggest the value of engaging with issues of representation, narrative and reception to offer new perspectives on clinical, medical and community encounters with disability.