Deaf geographies sandbox

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  Mary Beth Kitzel 3:02 pm on May 6, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: conference ( 3 ), Deaf Geography ( 6 ), DEAF space ( 11 ), EDGS, Geography ( 3 )   

  EDGS Meet!

  The inaugural European Deaf Geographies Summit (EDGS) met 23-25 April 2012 in Bristol. The three-day meeting was informal, intense, exciting and productive. Our numbers may have been few, but our vision mighty! Below is a synopsis of our activities:

  Day 1: We convened and covered a range of issues from the history of the field to researcher existential angst to publishing to future research agendas. Surrounded the talks with delicious food and ended the evening with a screening of The Hammer.

  Day 2: Mary Beth Kitzel gave a presentation on her dissertation research at Bristol’s Centre for Deaf Studies, followed by a short field walk of the university neighbourhood, and a more extensive excursion into the region, including North Somerset, Somerset and Bristol. Highlights included the Cheddar Gorge and Weston-Super-Mare. The evening film screening was The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox.

  Day 3. Final Day. Spent morning networking with personnel from Bristol including Dai O’Brien and Donna West. The afternoon was a strategy session for future projects, including The Field School of Deaf Geographies’ curriculum. Delegates departed in the late afternoon.

  All in all, a cracking three days. A HUGE thank you to the Gulliver family, our excellent hosts, for permitting the invasion. I am already looking forward to the next time we convene. If you’re interested in joining us for the next EDGS event, please contact any of the founding organizers: Gill Harold (UC Cork), Mike Gulliver (Bristol), or Mary Beth Kitzel (Sussex).

   

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  Mary Beth Kitzel 12:51 pm on March 3, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Bader International Study Centre ( 3 ), Deaf Geography ( 6 ), Field School ( 4 )   

  Check out information on the inaugural 2013 Deaf Geographies Field School at Queen’s University (Canada) Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex here:
  http://mbkitzel.wordpress.com/

   
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  Mary Beth Kitzel 9:25 am on August 28, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  DEAF Geography at RGS Annual Conference 

  On 31 August, the annual conference of the Royal Geographical Society is hosting it’s first session dedicated to DEAF Geographies, Intersecting Geographical Imaginations: Social Geography and Deaf Studies. There is an excellent line-up of papers and Tracey Skelton is the discussant. Check them out here:

  http://conference.rgs.org/conference/sessions/View.aspx?heading=Y&session=01f01d2e-7b47-432f-bfb3-086cc03a60af

  The abstract for the session reads:

  Acknowledging notable exceptions such as of the work of Valentine and Skelton (2003 and 2007) and Batterbury et al. (2007), social geography has largely yet to engage in an evolved dialogue with Deaf Studies. This is surprising, as at the intersection of human, social, cultural geographies and Deaf Studies we find exciting potential to think about spatiality, language, citizenship, education, and identity, as well as a myriad of further themes of interest to the social geographer, in new ways. From within Deaf Studies, for example, Emery has pertinently identified ‘…the ways in which Deaf citizens are excluded from citizenship, namely, due to citizenship being phonocentric, [and] social policy being audist’ (2009: 42). Engaging with such discourses can lead to a broadening of the geographical imagination by highlighting the subtle biases with which our research and philosophical perspectives can become, often unknowingly, inflected. Academic discourses around d/Deafness have served to perpetuate constructions of the Deaf figure as ‘other’ in social thought. Perceived as a markedly different identity, considerations of d/Deafness have been disproportionately informed by a disability-led understanding, which has undermined and critically neglected the understanding of Deaf culturo-linguistic identity. As Obasi posits; ‘[t]he myopia of this perspective prevents us from looking beyond audiology to see the fuller picture of visual and linguistic plenitude identified from within Deaf cultural theorizing’ (Obasi, 2008: 458). Using these lenses, we begin to deconstruct traditional discourses around the social construction of place. Critical perspectives from scholarly work in both Deaf studies and social geography will contest and negotiate the threshold existing at the interface of both disciplines. The overall aims of the session are: * to draw focus to discourses that are of shared mutual interest to social geography and Deaf Studies; * to revisit, deconstruct, challenge and destabilise hitherto accepted ideologies in light of this engagement; * to generate and develop understandings of how such inter-disciplinary conversations can enrich both. In doing so, the session promotes discourses which seek to challenge and overturn audist perspectives and present new opportunities to rethink identity and conceptualise space as shaped by the mosaic of difference.