Events
The Communities of Care project sponsors events throughout the year, from lectures to exhibits and more. Watch this space for coming attractions.
Featured Speakers
Symposium 2025
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Featured Speakers
Sarah Robert and Jen Gaddis — November 20, 2024
Featured Speaker
Marie Sépulchre — October 22, 2024
In this presentation, Dr. Marie Sépulchre asks whether there is space for freedom in relationships of care.
Is there space for freedom in relationships of care?
Marie Sépulchre, PhD
In this presentation, Dr. Marie Sépulchre asks whether there is space for freedom in relationships of care. Starting from the apparent contradiction between ideals of freedom and independence, and the reality of vulnerability and (inter-)dependence regarding disability, the presentation proposes that the concept of freedom as non-domination is useful to articulate key aspects of social justice in relationships of care. To illustrate the argument, the presentation proceeds with the story of how Marie and her friend Alexander (who is labelled with intellectual disability) tried to publish a book together. Although the manuscript had been accepted for publication, they had to withdraw it because of the fierce opposition of Alexander’s sister, who is also his legal guardian. The presentation analyses the complex set of vulnerabilities included in the story in the light of freedom as non-domination. Sépulchre concludes that freedom is an essential element for relationships of care rooted in social justice. The presentation ends by opening a discussion on the possibility to claim freedom in a neoliberal context where care and welfare provisions are difficult to secure.
Bio: Marie Sépulchre, PhD, started her work in Disability Studies by analysing the citizenship claims of disability activists in Sweden. She then examined, from an intersectional perspective, how the right to non-discrimination based on disability is understood and implemented in Sweden and the United States. Dr. Sépulchre’s current projects focus on communities of care, disability rights and justice, and freedom as non-domination. Sépulchre holds a PhD in Sociology from Uppsala University (Sweden). She is an assistant professor at the School of Social Work at Lund University (Sweden) and a visiting scholar in the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo, on the Communities of Care project. Sépulchre is a member of the board of the Nordic Network on Disability Research. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Disability and Social Justice, the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, Disability & Society, Disability & Rehabilitation, Critical Social Policy, Social Inclusion, and Alter – the European Journal of Disability Research. Sépulchre was awarded the Alter Young Author Prize in 2019. Her book Disability and Citizenship Studies (Routledge 2021) unpacks the struggle for citizenship of Swedish disability activists. Visit: www.sepulchremarie.com.
Featured Speaker
Efrat Gold — March 2024
Efrat Gold — March 2024
Towards a Pedagogy of the Psychiatrized: Reflections on Process and Method
Informed by the records of late antipsychiatry scholar/activist Dr. Bonnie Burstow (1945-2020), this talk slows down to focus on process, methods, and methodologies in turning records into archives. Until recently, mad people’s history has largely been told through the perspectives of medical experts, claiming authority while dismissing self-representations of madness and obscuring the claims and direct experiences of the psychiatrized. Efforts to include representations of mad and psychiatrized people must grapple with the process of how to do so without falling into the trappings of reproducing the exploitation of this marginalized group. Burstow’s records, spanning from the late 1970s until her death, contain rich histories of mad and psychiatrized people as well as records of their resistance to psychiatric oppression. Many of the histories contained are those of people now deceased, raising questions about the ethics of representation and mobilization of these records. Grounded in the slow process of cataloging, I take up questions of methodology, methods, and ethics in curating a collection of records.
Efrat Gold is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at SUNY UB’s Centre for Disability Studies, engaging in mad studies. Working with records and artefacts, she explores various appearances and disappearances of mad and psychiatrized people. Critiquing psychiatric hegemony and calling attention to the naturalization of medicalized orientations to human suffering, Gold unearths a multitude of present-absences of those cast off as mad. Tracing the boundaries of normalcy, she explores practices of meaning-making that reproduce sanist and ableist cultural attitudes. Foregrounding the often-overlooked active role of mad and disabled people in pushing back against their marginalization and creating life-affirming possibilities for survival, Gold is motivated by radical politics that recognize the entwined landscape of oppression within efforts to build different futures.
