Medical Humanities and the Fantastic Online Symposium:
Neurodiversity and Disability
Friday 11th February 2022
Keynote lectures from Dr Ria Cheyne and Dr Louise Creechan
The second Medical Humanities and the Fantastic Symposium, funded by the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Medical Humanities’ Early Career Foundation Award, and co-hosted by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, continues to map and establish new ways of connecting research into the fantastic (traditionally understood as science fiction, fantasy and horror) and popular culture with the field of the medical humanities. It aims to showcase the potentials the fantastic has to offer as valuable gateway and perspective for discussing medical encounters, practices and lived experiences. The fantastic as a research method can expand the scope of the medical humanities since its modus operandi relies on reframing human understanding of the world, particularly the human condition and its relationship to technology, society, and the environment. Likewise, medical humanities offer emerging trajectories to approach the fantastic.
This time the symposium intends to focus on a specific area, and its theme is set as “Neurodiversity and Disability”, seeking to explore and formulating answers the following questions:
- How does the fantastic represent or subvert neurodiversity and disability?
- How can the fantastic help express lived experiences of neurodiversity and disability?
- How can the fantastic negotiate the reframing of current medical, social, political and economic debates surrounding neurodiversity and disability?
- How can the fantastic raise awareness, and facilitate critical and policy intervention?
We are inviting 10-15-minute presentations (including work-in-progress projects) relating to but not limited to the following topics:
- Ableism
- Academia
- Activism
- ADHD, ASD
- Anthropocene
- Art and artistic practices
- Care and care crisis
- Capitalism and anti-capitalism
- Children’s literature
- Chronic illness and chronic pain
- Comics and graphic novels
- Communities online and offline
- Creativity
- Dis/ability
- Ecology, ecopsychology, ecosickness
- Education
- Fantasy
- Fantastic franchises
- Film and television
- Gaming and gamification
- Gender
- Gothic and Horror
- History and medical history
- Modernism and Postmodernism
- Neurodiversity and the Neurodiversity Movement
- Posthumanism
- Precarity
- Reproductive health
- Robotics
- Science fiction and speculative fiction
- Sex and sexuality
- Social media
- Technology
- Theatre
- Vulnerability
- Weird fiction
- Young Adult
Please send your short abstract (100-200 words) accompanied by a brief bio (50-100 words) by the end of January 2022 as well as any enquiries and concerns to fantastic.medhums@gmail.com. For information and updates on the event follow @fantastic_mhs on Twitter.