What would a world be like if it fully welcomed and included people with disabilities?  How could we build that world to share and live in together? Why would that be a better world for all of us? This lecture shows how the new field of disability studies addresses these questions by bringing forward the history, culture, politics, aesthetics, and ethics of disability and people living with disabilities. Books will be on sale and reception will follow the program.

Bio: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is a disability justice and culture thought leader, bioethicist, teacher, and humanities scholar. Her 2016 editorial, “Becoming Disabled,” was the inaugural article in the ongoing weekly series in the New York Times about disability by people living with disabilities. She is a professor of English and bioethics at Emory University, where she teaches disability studies, bioethics, American literature and culture, and feminist theory. Her work develops the field of critical disability studies in the health humanities to bring forward disability access, inclusion, and identity to a broad range of institutions and communities. She is the author of Staring: How We Look and several other books. Her current project is Embracing Our Humanity: A Bioethics of Disability and Health.