Conference objectives
“Disorderly Conduct” will bring together international scholars from such disciplines as sociology, philosophy, health studies, history and women's studies to explore and problematize the clinical deployment of the language of "disorder". Since Foucault's Birth of the Clinic, researchers from across the humanities and social sciences have argued that medical practices and discourses belong not simply to the realm of healthcare, but to the realm of governance. In a governance model, citizens/subjects are taken to be responsible not only for their own well-being, but also, and perhaps more crucially, for managing their bodies and their behaviours in ways that promote and maximise the civic health of the larger population. Bodies and behaviours are, therefore, measured, categorized, subjected to a variety of quality assurance procedures employing diagnostic and other regulatory technologies. In simultaneous counter-stream with critiques of medicine's social ordering function, however, clinicians are increasingly deploying the language of disorder to describe a variety of human conditions that challenge the idealised, civic body. Clinical language no longer speaks of "madness", but of a variety of personality and relationship disorders; a whole host of diverse bodily functions is contained under the rubric of "metabolic disorders"; divergent and disparate modes of of interaction are drawn together under the umbrellas of "autism spectrum disorder" and "pervasive development disorder"; individuals previously apprehended as intersexed are now diagnosed with "disorders of sexual development." The rhetoric of disorder not only conflates quite disparate conditions but also serves to regulate the social body by stigmatizing the "disordered" body and thus defining and idealizing the "well-ordered" one.
Significance and timeliness of the theme
In the interdisciplinary field of disability studies, three key texts serve as critical departure points for the questioning of "disorder" as a neutral and objective statement of clinical or diagnostic fact. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture (Columbia UP, 1997) has given to studies of embodiment (including disability, sexuality, and psychological concerns) the language of "the normate." Garland-Thomson argues that the normate fantasy of human being -- the idealized, atomized, rationalized and radically individualized body -- devalues the frailty, disability and dependency that mark and characterize most human lives and relationships. Eric Parens' and Adrienne Asch's landmark collection, Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights (Georgetown UP, 2000), critically examines a variety of reproductive technologies, not as means through which would-be parents exercise more choice but as a set of ideologically linked technologies aimed at quality control of "products of fertilization." The language of "disorder" in the prenatal testing context is clearly to be refused, but Parens and Asch and the disability studies scholars who write in the collection ask us to consider what we lose (the full spectrum of human frailty) and what we promote (prejudice, fear, economic value of humans, discrimination, etc.) when we seek to do away with disorder. Finally, taking aim at contemporary psychiatric practice and capitalist investments in a compliant workforce, Carl Elliott's Better than well: American medicine meets the American dream (Norton, 2003) critically reflects on the assertion that a variety of mood "disorders" are purely biological and chemically manageable phenomena, rather than valuable symptoms of social conditions that produce suffering.
These texts are touchstones for a new generation of interdisciplinary scholars who work in the intellectual space where disability studies intersects with such diverse areas as queer theory, feminist theories of embodiment, post-structuralist ethics, and the burgeoning field of intersex studies. In gathering together some 100 of these scholars for a weekend of colloquia, symposia and workshops, Disorderly Conduct marks a significant Canadian chapter in an international field of increasing breadth and influence.
Appropriateness and quality of the conference's scope and program in relation to the theme
In workshops and symposia, conference participants will examine the uses and abuses of the notion of a disorder from a variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches. Confirmed talks will consider such diverse "disorders" as Disorders of Sexual Development (DSDs), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Gender Identity Disorder (GID), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and a variety of 'mood disorders'. Other speakers will consider the role of "Big Pharma" in the discovery/invention of various disorders, and the political and social context informing the taxonomy of disorders in the nascent fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM V). Together, conference participants will examine the implications of shifting diagnostic protocols and language, and the promise and limitations of increasing the degree of input that patients have into their medical care in a consumer-service based model. While many of these talks adopt a critical stance toward clinical language and practice, Disorderly Conduct will also feature a discussion panel composed of Health Sciences scholars who both provide clinical care, and educate future clinicians. As fraught as the language of "disorder" continues to be, it is important that critics and scholars of "disorder" and clinicians meet and share their ideas and expertise. This conference provides an important venue for such an exchange.
Caliber of the speakers
Stephen Angelides, the opening keynote speaker is currently a research fellow (CRC equivalent) at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Angelides is the author of A History of Bisexuality (U. Chicago, 2001), and a leader in the complementary fields of sexuality studies and queer theory. Dr. Angelides' work challenges taken-for-granted categories of sexuality, and more recently of the emotional and sexual-identity development of adolescents. Dr. Angelides' current work critiques the current vogue for treating adolescence as a disordered developmental stage in which brain function is said to be fundamentally skewed toward destructive and ill-conceived behaviours.
Robert McRuer is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English at George Washington University, Washington. He has fifteen articles in refereed journals and books, as well as two important monographs and a key edited collection in the field. His Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (NYU P, 2006) was a finalist for a 2007 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies and the winner of the 2007 Alan Bray Memorial Book Award (presented by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association). His co-edited (with Abby L. Wilkerson) Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies Special Double Issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9:1-2 (Duke UP, 2003) won the 2003 Best Special Issue Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). Dr. McRuer has also authored the Afterword for the Critical Intersex collection (Ashgate, 2009) that will be the subject of a roundtable at the conference.
Katrina Roen. Associate Professor of psychology at the University of Norway, has contributed a number of seminal articles in the field of intersex studies (GLQ, 2009; Social Science and Medicine, 2006; Signs, 2001; Gender Studies 2001 -- among others). Dr. Roen's contributions to the critical rethinking of clinical practice and ethics of care have addressed understandings of identity development in children, youth suicide and self-harm, and issues encompassing gender, sexuality, and embodiment. With 19 articles and chapters in print and in production, Dr. Roen's contributions address a range of social justice and health related concerns viewed from a decidedly interdisciplinary perspective.
Contribution to research and scholarship a) in Canada and b) internationally
Disorderly Conduct marks the first conference of its kind to take place in Canada. The conference's keynote and plenary speakers are leaders in the fields of disability studies, queer theory and sexuality studies and each hold international reputations. Bringing these scholars together with those who are developing research and practice standards in Canada marks an opportunity for the development of ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration between internationally located scholars and graduate students. Following in part from the European model of intensive, issue oriented seminars, this conference brings a distinguished tradition to Canada, and does so as the most ambitious of such meetings yet, gathering together as it does participants at various stages of their academic careers and from a broad range of disciplines from the humanities, social sciences and health sciences. The conference furthermore promises to promote collaborative research networks for Canadian faculty at various career-stages. We are particularly pleased that our conference call for papers garnered the attention of Atlantis Journal of Feminist Studies, and an invitation from the journal board to publish the best of the conference papers presented.
Ways in which the conference fosters links between appropriate disciplines or fields
Each of the panels draws together scholars at different stages of research, and from different disciplines and sub-fields, thus providing participants and attendees multiple opportunities to catalyze their thinking through an interdisciplinary framework. The inclusion of a variety of specialized symposia and two round-tables will provide extensive opportunity for considered discussion of the issues raised by the panels and presentations.
Role of students
In drawing together Canadian and international scholars from a variety of disciplines, Disorderly Conduct will provide valuable scholarly and professional experience for students. Already local graduate students have played an important role, providing administrative and organizational support for the conference, and refereeing a number of submissions. Moreover, graduate students -- local, national and international -- will be delivering 25 talks and interventions, one invited and 24 blind-refereed. Conference organizers anticipate that a significant number of the papers published in the conference proceedings will be by graduate student authors. Finally, a number of graduate and undergraduate students from Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo, to be determined in May, will work as volunteers at the conference, in exchange for a waiver of their registration fees. This will allow students who are not presenting papers at the conference to interact with scholars at the conference and to attend talks that support their own research.
“Disorderly Conduct” will bring together international scholars from such disciplines as sociology, philosophy, health studies, history and women's studies to explore and problematize the clinical deployment of the language of "disorder". Since Foucault's Birth of the Clinic, researchers from across the humanities and social sciences have argued that medical practices and discourses belong not simply to the realm of healthcare, but to the realm of governance. In a governance model, citizens/subjects are taken to be responsible not only for their own well-being, but also, and perhaps more crucially, for managing their bodies and their behaviours in ways that promote and maximise the civic health of the larger population. Bodies and behaviours are, therefore, measured, categorized, subjected to a variety of quality assurance procedures employing diagnostic and other regulatory technologies. In simultaneous counter-stream with critiques of medicine's social ordering function, however, clinicians are increasingly deploying the language of disorder to describe a variety of human conditions that challenge the idealised, civic body. Clinical language no longer speaks of "madness", but of a variety of personality and relationship disorders; a whole host of diverse bodily functions is contained under the rubric of "metabolic disorders"; divergent and disparate modes of of interaction are drawn together under the umbrellas of "autism spectrum disorder" and "pervasive development disorder"; individuals previously apprehended as intersexed are now diagnosed with "disorders of sexual development." The rhetoric of disorder not only conflates quite disparate conditions but also serves to regulate the social body by stigmatizing the "disordered" body and thus defining and idealizing the "well-ordered" one.
Significance and timeliness of the theme
In the interdisciplinary field of disability studies, three key texts serve as critical departure points for the questioning of "disorder" as a neutral and objective statement of clinical or diagnostic fact. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture (Columbia UP, 1997) has given to studies of embodiment (including disability, sexuality, and psychological concerns) the language of "the normate." Garland-Thomson argues that the normate fantasy of human being -- the idealized, atomized, rationalized and radically individualized body -- devalues the frailty, disability and dependency that mark and characterize most human lives and relationships. Eric Parens' and Adrienne Asch's landmark collection, Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights (Georgetown UP, 2000), critically examines a variety of reproductive technologies, not as means through which would-be parents exercise more choice but as a set of ideologically linked technologies aimed at quality control of "products of fertilization." The language of "disorder" in the prenatal testing context is clearly to be refused, but Parens and Asch and the disability studies scholars who write in the collection ask us to consider what we lose (the full spectrum of human frailty) and what we promote (prejudice, fear, economic value of humans, discrimination, etc.) when we seek to do away with disorder. Finally, taking aim at contemporary psychiatric practice and capitalist investments in a compliant workforce, Carl Elliott's Better than well: American medicine meets the American dream (Norton, 2003) critically reflects on the assertion that a variety of mood "disorders" are purely biological and chemically manageable phenomena, rather than valuable symptoms of social conditions that produce suffering.
These texts are touchstones for a new generation of interdisciplinary scholars who work in the intellectual space where disability studies intersects with such diverse areas as queer theory, feminist theories of embodiment, post-structuralist ethics, and the burgeoning field of intersex studies. In gathering together some 100 of these scholars for a weekend of colloquia, symposia and workshops, Disorderly Conduct marks a significant Canadian chapter in an international field of increasing breadth and influence.
Appropriateness and quality of the conference's scope and program in relation to the theme
In workshops and symposia, conference participants will examine the uses and abuses of the notion of a disorder from a variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches. Confirmed talks will consider such diverse "disorders" as Disorders of Sexual Development (DSDs), Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Gender Identity Disorder (GID), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and a variety of 'mood disorders'. Other speakers will consider the role of "Big Pharma" in the discovery/invention of various disorders, and the political and social context informing the taxonomy of disorders in the nascent fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM V). Together, conference participants will examine the implications of shifting diagnostic protocols and language, and the promise and limitations of increasing the degree of input that patients have into their medical care in a consumer-service based model. While many of these talks adopt a critical stance toward clinical language and practice, Disorderly Conduct will also feature a discussion panel composed of Health Sciences scholars who both provide clinical care, and educate future clinicians. As fraught as the language of "disorder" continues to be, it is important that critics and scholars of "disorder" and clinicians meet and share their ideas and expertise. This conference provides an important venue for such an exchange.
Caliber of the speakers
Stephen Angelides, the opening keynote speaker is currently a research fellow (CRC equivalent) at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Angelides is the author of A History of Bisexuality (U. Chicago, 2001), and a leader in the complementary fields of sexuality studies and queer theory. Dr. Angelides' work challenges taken-for-granted categories of sexuality, and more recently of the emotional and sexual-identity development of adolescents. Dr. Angelides' current work critiques the current vogue for treating adolescence as a disordered developmental stage in which brain function is said to be fundamentally skewed toward destructive and ill-conceived behaviours.
Robert McRuer is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English at George Washington University, Washington. He has fifteen articles in refereed journals and books, as well as two important monographs and a key edited collection in the field. His Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (NYU P, 2006) was a finalist for a 2007 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies and the winner of the 2007 Alan Bray Memorial Book Award (presented by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association). His co-edited (with Abby L. Wilkerson) Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies Special Double Issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9:1-2 (Duke UP, 2003) won the 2003 Best Special Issue Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ). Dr. McRuer has also authored the Afterword for the Critical Intersex collection (Ashgate, 2009) that will be the subject of a roundtable at the conference.
Katrina Roen. Associate Professor of psychology at the University of Norway, has contributed a number of seminal articles in the field of intersex studies (GLQ, 2009; Social Science and Medicine, 2006; Signs, 2001; Gender Studies 2001 -- among others). Dr. Roen's contributions to the critical rethinking of clinical practice and ethics of care have addressed understandings of identity development in children, youth suicide and self-harm, and issues encompassing gender, sexuality, and embodiment. With 19 articles and chapters in print and in production, Dr. Roen's contributions address a range of social justice and health related concerns viewed from a decidedly interdisciplinary perspective.
Contribution to research and scholarship a) in Canada and b) internationally
Disorderly Conduct marks the first conference of its kind to take place in Canada. The conference's keynote and plenary speakers are leaders in the fields of disability studies, queer theory and sexuality studies and each hold international reputations. Bringing these scholars together with those who are developing research and practice standards in Canada marks an opportunity for the development of ongoing interdisciplinary collaboration between internationally located scholars and graduate students. Following in part from the European model of intensive, issue oriented seminars, this conference brings a distinguished tradition to Canada, and does so as the most ambitious of such meetings yet, gathering together as it does participants at various stages of their academic careers and from a broad range of disciplines from the humanities, social sciences and health sciences. The conference furthermore promises to promote collaborative research networks for Canadian faculty at various career-stages. We are particularly pleased that our conference call for papers garnered the attention of Atlantis Journal of Feminist Studies, and an invitation from the journal board to publish the best of the conference papers presented.
Ways in which the conference fosters links between appropriate disciplines or fields
Each of the panels draws together scholars at different stages of research, and from different disciplines and sub-fields, thus providing participants and attendees multiple opportunities to catalyze their thinking through an interdisciplinary framework. The inclusion of a variety of specialized symposia and two round-tables will provide extensive opportunity for considered discussion of the issues raised by the panels and presentations.
Role of students
In drawing together Canadian and international scholars from a variety of disciplines, Disorderly Conduct will provide valuable scholarly and professional experience for students. Already local graduate students have played an important role, providing administrative and organizational support for the conference, and refereeing a number of submissions. Moreover, graduate students -- local, national and international -- will be delivering 25 talks and interventions, one invited and 24 blind-refereed. Conference organizers anticipate that a significant number of the papers published in the conference proceedings will be by graduate student authors. Finally, a number of graduate and undergraduate students from Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo, to be determined in May, will work as volunteers at the conference, in exchange for a waiver of their registration fees. This will allow students who are not presenting papers at the conference to interact with scholars at the conference and to attend talks that support their own research.