SIDEBAR: Alien Embodiments #1
Join us for this conversation on normative conceptions of bodies and how to challenge them. Bringing together perspectives from media phenomenology, the arts, social sciences, disability studies, and occupational theory, this panel proposes new ways of thinking about and through the body. The new director of the Art, Science, and Culture initiative, Desiree Foerster (Department for Cinema and Media Studies) will be joined by Michele Friedner (Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago) and Amy Roder McArthur (occupational therapist and disability researcher, Northwestern University) to kick off a new series of events at the Gray Center, dedicated to the interdisciplinary exploration of diverse embodiments.
Free and open to the public
Food and drinks will be served (6:00 - 6:30)
About the participants:
Michele Friedner is a professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago. A medical anthropologist, she conducts research with deaf and disabled folks in India. She has written about deaf socialites, sensory personhood, and sensory hierarchies, among other things, and works at the intersections of anthropology, deaf studies, disability studies, sensory studies, and science and technology studies. She is interested in discussing how deaf and disabled people create habitable worlds for themselves and others.
Amy McArthur is a postdoctoral fellow in Disability & Employment at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. She recently earned her PhD in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois Chicago. Dr. McArthur's research explores how cancer survivors navigate changes in their everyday participation following diagnosis and treatment with a focus on the intersection of cancer survivorship and disability. She holds a master's degree in occupational therapy from Tufts University and a bachelor's degree in public policy from the University of Chicago.
Desiree Foerster studies new media arts and design from a process-relational and critical phenomenology perspective. She is currently based at the University of Chicago, where she is a Senior Research Associate in the Cinema and Media Studies department and the director of the Art, Science and Culture Initiative. Previously, Desiree was an Assistant Professor for Digital Media and Culture Studies at the Utrecht University. She did her PhD at the Institute for Arts and Media at the University of Potsdam with her thesis “Aesthetic Experience of Metabolic Processes”, and she holds additional degrees in Media Culture Analysis from Duesseldorf (MA) and Comparative Literature and Philosophy (BA) from Bochum. She regularly collaborates with colleagues from the arts and science on projects of research-creation. Her research interests include the phenomenology of media, media ecologies, affect, process philosophy, sensory studies, and immersive technologies.