Cultural critic Rosemarie Garland-Thomson will speak at the College of Charleston on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 7:00 p.m. in the Alumni Center in the School of Education, Health, and Human Performance (86 Wentworth). This event is free and open to the public.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is the scholar who established and popularized feminist disability studies.  She is a professor of Women’s Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and she is devoted to developing the field of disability studies in the humanities and in women’s studies.

“Rosemarie approaches this topic from a social justice perspective and it is exciting to have her at the College to help advance this civil rights movement,” says Alison Piepmeier, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. “I hope from this lecture, we’ll recognize that disability is part of being human, and that there are ways of seeing disability that aren’t stigmatizing or pitying.”

Garland-Thomson is the author and editor of five books, including Staring: How We Look (Oxford University Press, 2009), Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (Columbia University Press, 1997), and Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities (Modern Language Association Press, 2002), and she has written numerous articles about feminist disability studies.  The Utne Reader named her in its 2009 list of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World,” and the Society for Disability Studies recognized her with its 2010 Senior Scholar Award.

Sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the English Department, the REACH Program, and the Center for Disability Services.

For more information, contact Alison Piepmeier at piepmeiera@cofc.edu.