Blind Creations conference - CFP issued

I am very excited to be co-organising the Blind Creations conference with Vanessa Warne (University of Manitoba, Canada). This three-day international conference, which will take place between 28 June and 30 June 2015, seeks to explore the relationship between blind people and artistic creation. Our definition of ‘blind person’ is broad, encompassing anyone who might be defined as having ‘non-normative vision’ and / or who relates to the world using senses other than sight. It welcomes interventions from blind and non-blind academics (with or without institutional affiliation), practitioners, advocates, writers and artists (also broadly defined to include musicians, dancers and sculptors as well as visual artists). It sees blind people not only as subjects in their own right, but also as active creators; as such it rejects the ‘medical model’ of disability which posits blind people as passive objects of medical investigation and rehabilitation. In so doing it hopes to challenge and reconceptualise the myths and stereotypes of ‘blindness’ which continue to circulate by recasting ‘blindness’ as a multi-faceted and positive creative force which might be usefully explored by both non-blind and blind people.

The conference will take place at Royal Holloway’s campus in Egham, Surrey, UK, We are pleased to announce that the conference will feature two plenary speakers: Prof Georgina Kleege (UC Berkeley) and Dr Zina Weygand (Paris). During the conference, we plan to host a number of cultural events, including a Blindness in Fiction Writers’ Roundtable (featuring novelist and poet, Naomi Foyle), a tactile museum tour, and an audio-described film screening.

The conference Call for Papers can be found here and more information about the speakers is available here.