I wrote a brief reflection on the subversive imaginations of N. K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor, linking their protagonists to neurodiversity. The essay is one of several introducing the new issue of the Museum of Science Fiction’s Journal of Science Fiction, now live, with the special theme of disability studies! Sami Schalk and Michael Bérubé also contributed reflections.

Great job to Aisha Matthews, who put together a great issue!

Citation information:

Hall, Melinda. 2019. “What Future People Will There Be? Neurodiverse Heroes for a Changing Planet.” MOSF Journal of Science Fiction 3 (2): 15-17.

CFP: philoSOPHIA 14th Annual Conference, May 14-17, 2020

Hosted by Kelly Oliver at Vanderbilt University

The 14th annual meeting of philoSOPHIA will run from the evening of Thursday, May 14, to Sunday, May 17, 2020, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

Plenary speakers are Kathryn Sophia Belle (Penn State), Lisa Guenther (Queens University), and Tracy Sharpley Whiting (Vanderbilt).

Plenary Panel, “New Perspectives on Disability”, featuring Kim Q. Hall, Melinda C. Hall, Joel Michael Reynolds, and Shelley Lynn Tremain.

The conference will have two workshop streams: “Rethinking Prisons” and “Rethinking Disability”

Submit abstracts (500-700 words) or panel proposals (panel abstract, 500 words, plus panelists’ abstracts, 500-700 words each) on any topic related to Continental Feminism—very broadly construed—for the general program. Indicate on your abstract if you are applying to participate in a workshop.

Send abstracts to: 14thphilosophia@gmail.com

Deadline: December 15th, 2019

I was interviewed for news stories and opinion pieces on working motherhood, prison education, women among freshmen lawmakers, and new abortion laws in May and June. Stories at the links.

Shannon Green, Orlando Sentinel, June 6: Abortion bans aren’t just a war on women, they’re a war among women

Talk Media News, May 22: Female Congressional Staffers getting more leadership roles with freshmen lawmakers

Eileen Zaffiro-Kean, Daytona Beach News Journal, May 11:  ‘You make it work’: Volusia working moms juggle dual roles

T. S. Jarmusz, Daytona Beach News Journal, May 8: Stetson professors venture to prison to education inmates

 

 

My chapter on enhancement and disability for the Oxford Handbook on Philosophy and Disability is now published and available online. Check it out!

Here’s the information:
“Second Thoughts on Enhancement and Disability,” Melinda C. Hall

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability, edited by David T. Wasserman and Adam Cureton

Abstract and Keywords

Transhumanist arguments in support of radical human enhancement are inimical to disability justice projects. Transhumanist thinkers, the strongest promoters of human enhancement, and fellow travelers who claim enhancement is a moral obligation, make arguments that rely on the denigration of disabled embodiment and lives. These arguments link disability with risk. The promotion of human enhancement is therefore open to significant disability critique despite transhumanism’s claims to allyship with disability justice activism. This chapter lays out such a disability critique of enhancement and further supports its claims by describing bioethics, and therefore transhumanism, as biopolitical in the sense Michel Foucault uses the term. Finally, this chapter develops an alternative vision of enhancement. This alternative vision poses a disability-inclusive future, accepts the risks of embodiment, and lays groundwork for a counterdiscourse of enhancement.

Keywords: enhancement, transhumanism, biopolitics, disability justice, the future, risk

In September, my book The Bioethics of Enhancement came out in paperback! Check it out at the new, much lower price! If you’d like me to send you an additional discount let me know.

Happy New Year! Help me celebrate the new year with a glance at my new work, the blog BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY!

Shelley Tremain and I are launching this blog today with the hope for a deeply politically engaged conversation featuring marginalized voices in philosophy about social and political issues and justice. I can’t wait to get started!

To begin, check out my post on the new movie Bird Box and disability and Shelley’s draft of new work on feminist philosophy of science, Foucault, and disability! We will post CFPs (there are some up already) and links to new work in marginalized philosophy and beyond.

Soon, you can also start following us on Twitter @biopoliticalph (I had a bit of a Twitter account hiccup, but we’ll be back up and running again soon) and right away you can join our re-christened Facebook group, BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, formerly home of the Discrimination and Disadvantage community. If you are a WordPress user or just like a good blog feed, consider becoming a follower of our website itself, too (option available on the homepage).

The blog will be the home of Shelley’s acclaimed interviews with disabled philosophers, Dialogues on Disability. Her first interview in this venue will go live on January 16th at 8 am. So much exciting stuff is in the works! I am thrilled about this new philosophical (ad)venture.

I am thrilled to announce a new philosophical venture, undertaken with Shelley Tremain. In January, we will launch a blog entitled BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

The blog will:

• provide up-to-date information and cutting-edge critical analysis of biopolitical asymmetries and other mechanisms and effects of power in philosophy and beyond, especially with respect to disability and apparatuses such as gender, race, class, nationality, and sexuality with which disability is co-constitutive;
• showcase the insights of members of underrepresented constituencies in philosophy and work done in marginalized areas of specialization;
• advertise CFPs and other notices for publications, conferences, workshops, institutes, and projects pertinent to underrepresented philosophers and subordinated areas of philosophical inquiry;
• offer a venue for disabled and other underrepresented and marginalized philosophers to gain the experience and skills required to both engage in philosophical discussion and the profession of philosophy more generally;
• Will be home to Dialogues on Disability, the acclaimed series of interviews that Tremain is conducting with disabled philosophers and posts to the blog on a monthly basis.

More details to follow in the coming weeks!