Neurodiversities

A CHCI Medical Humanities Network / Duke Health Humanities Lab@FHI Symposium

NEURODIVERSITIES

Fri./ Sat. Oct. 26-27, 2018, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University

Co-Sponsors: UNC Institute for Arts & Humanities & HHIVE;

DIBS /FHI Neurohumanities Research Group

             The term “neurodiversity,” first popularized by the autism community, challenges the pathologization of neurological deviation from socially constructed notions of “neurotypicality.” Another branch of “neurodiversity” discourse challenges the abstraction of the ideas of “mind” and “mental” states, using tools of empirical neuroscience to dismantle binary divides between “brainhood” and “embodiment.” Psychiatry now grapples with the implicit Western cultural “typicality” embedded in medical frameworks. In the humanities, the study and teaching of literature and the arts is experiencing revitalization through interrogation of traditional conceptions of cognition and consciousness, along with humanistic exploration of questions raised by neuroscientific experimentation. Through Friday keynotes, panels, an evening film screening and Saturday interactive workshops, we invite participants to engage with five central areas of concern:

• Literature and autism: Exploring literature’s capacity “to stimulate embodied experience by activating nonlinguistic areas in the reader’s brain” in a way that comes as “close to an autistic way of engaging with the world as any form of language will allow” with Ralph Savarese.
• Globalizing psychiatry: The challenge to Western cultural “typicality” involved in the growing globalization of psychiatry since the 1990s, with Richard C. Keller.
• Documentary Neurodiversities: Screening of Deej: Audience Q&A hosted by filmmaker and poet DJ Savarese using a text-to-voice synthesizer.
• Autism and Art Forms: An interactive workshop on poetry and autism led by DJ Savarese.
• Of Neurodiversities and Universities (For a Pedagogy of Resiliency): Campus health, disability scholars/advocates, and neurodiversity leaders guide faculty and community members on how to work proactively with structures and initiatives at Duke to assess and shore up student resiliency, forestall or manage crises, and make a home for neurodiversities. They will also provide guidance on how to locate and interact with resources elsewhere, and how to ally, advocate, and organize to close gaps in availability or efficacy.