I am so thrilled to report that the higher education in prison program I co-lead, Community Education Project, is now a Mellon-funded program! Congrats to my colleagues, but also – and most importantly – our incarcerated students at Tomoka Correctional Institution in Daytona Beach, FL.

I’m so thrilled to present this week at an exciting conference organized by Shelley Tremain and Jonathan Wolff. I will share my work on risk, “Risking Ourselves: The Politics and Persons of Risk,” on Friday at 12:30 pm EST.

Find registration information, the program, and other details below!

The Philosophy, Disability and Social Change online conference comprises presentations by disabled philosophers whose cutting-edge research challenges members of the philosophical community to:

1. think more critically about the metaphysical and epistemological status of disability;
2. closely examine how philosophy of disability is related to the tradition and discipline of philosophy;
3. acknowledge the continuing exclusion of disabled philosophers from the profession of philosophy;
4. seriously consider how philosophy and philosophers contribute to the pervasive inequality and subordination that disabled people confront throughout society;
5. develop mechanisms designed to transform the current professional and institutional position of disabled philosophers in particular and the economic, political and social position of disabled people more generally.

The presentations will highlight the diversity and range of approaches to critical philosophical work on disability and showcase the heterogeneity with respect to race, gender, nationality, sexuality, gender identity, culture, age and class of the community of disabled philosophers.

This conference is organised as part of the Alfred Landecker Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government.

Please note: This conference will be held online via Zoom. There will be live captioning for all of the sessions. Please register to attend using the form at the page linked below and you will receive an email containing joining instructions nearer to the conference date.

Register at the Philosophy, Disability and Social Change webpage here: https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/events/philosophy-disability-and-social-change

PROGRAMME

Please note that session timings are currently subject to change. All times shown are Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

WEDNESDAY 9 DECEMBER

13:00–13:05 Welcome and opening remarks

• Co-hosts: Jonathan Wolff (Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford) and Shelley L Tremain (BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY)

13:05–13:55 Session 1 – Unmaking disability: Philosophy and social change

• Presenter: Julie E Maybee (Lehman College, CUNY)
• Chair: Shelley L Tremain (BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY)

14:05–14:55 Session 2 – African communitarian philosophy and disability in African contexts

• Presenter: Elvis Imafidon (SOAS, University of London)
• Chair: Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò (Georgetown University)

15:05–15:55 Session 3 – Dis/ableist inheritance

• Presenter: Jonathan Flowers (Worcester State University)
• Chair: Zara Bain (University of Bristol)

15:55–16:30 – Break

16:30–17:20 Session 4 – Ageism, ableism and the power of the double bind

• Presenter: Christine Overall (Queen’s University, Kingston)
• Chair: Jane Dryden (Mount Allison University)

17:30–18:20 Session 5 – Philosophy, the apparatus of disability, and the nursing-home industrial complex

• Presenter: Shelley L Tremain (BIOPOLITICAL PHILOSOPHY)
• Chair: Eric Winsberg (University of South Florida)

THURSDAY 10 DECEMBER

13:00–13:05 Informal meet and greet (tbc)

13:05–13:55 Session 1 – Rethinking neurotypical and autistic agency

• Presenter: Robert Chapman (University of Bristol)
• Chair: Bryce Huebner (Georgetown University)

14:05–14:55 Session 2 – A neurodiversity paradigm for moral responsibility

• Presenter: August Gorman (Princeton University)
• Chair: Cecilea Mun (Independent Scholar)

15:05–15:55 Session 3 – Cheap Talk: Stuttering, trolls, and talking heads

• Presenter: Joshua St. Pierre (University of Alberta)
• Chair: Jake Jackson (Temple University)

15:55–16:30 Break

16:30–17:20 Session 4 – Vulnerability to COVID-19 and the moral perniciousness of congregate care

• Presenter: Joseph Stramondo (San Diego State University)
• Chair: Laura M Cupples (Gonzaga University)

17:30–18:20 Session 5 – Captivity, carceral logics, and disposability

• Presenter: Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University)
• Chair: Lissa Skitolsky (Dalhousie University)

FRIDAY 11 DECEMBER

13:00–13:05 Informal meet and greet (tbc)

13:05–13:55 Session 1 – Chronic fatigue as adversity under capitalism

• Presenter: Michelle Ciurria (University of Missouri at St Louis)
• Chair: Jonathan Wolff (Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford)

14:05–14:55 Session 2 – Phenomenologies of debilitation and questions of volition

• Presenter: Emily R Douglas (McGill University)
• Chair: Tamsin Kimoto (Goucher College)

15:05–15:55 Session 3 – ‘He’s not worth it’: The deleterious character of the disabled Black male

• Presenter: Tommy J Curry (University of Edinburgh)
• Chair: Jonathan Flowers (Worcester State University)

15:55–16:30 Break

16:30–17:20 Session 4 – COVID-19 as crisis

• Presenter: Catherine Clune-Taylor (San Diego State University)
• Chair: Grace Cebrero (University of Minnesota)

17:30–18:20 Session 5 – Risking ourselves: The politics and persons of risk

• Presenter: Melinda C Hall (Stetson University)
• Chair: Joseph Stramondo (San Diego State University)

18:20–19:00 Close of conference and conference social (tbc)

I am a co-director of Stetson’s Higher Education in Prison program, Community Education Project (CEP).

We are hosting a virtual conference, “Florida Prisons in Uncertain Times,” to be held on April 9 and 10, 2021. Here is our Call for Proposals. The deadline for submissions is December 7th, and you can submit your proposal here.  

We are focused in Florida and would like robust state and regional participation from diverse stakeholders; but, we are also very glad to see proposals from national organizations engaged in work connected to Florida. This conference is funded by the Laughing Gull Foundation; we are very grateful for their support. 

We specifically invite organizations and activists to join this conversation by submitting a CFP; we also specifically invite currently and formerly incarcerated students, HEP instructors and administrators, state legislators and policymakers, and more to submit a CFP. Indeed, if you work on incarceration and post-incarceration, you are warmly invited to submit. Again, the deadline for submissions is December 7th, and you can submit here. 

Let me know if you have any questions! Please share this CFP widely, especially through your organizations and in FL.

I’m looking forward to giving a talk on disability justice at Penn State Law in State College, PA next week! The title of the discussion is: What is Disability Justice?

When: Friday, February 21, 1 to 2:15 pm
Where: Lewis Katz 118

The event is co-sponsored by the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and Outlaw. Thank you to Graham Ball for the invitation!

After two long years of work, my entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Critical Disability Theory, has been published. Take a look!

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.