Join us for the final fall event for the UMN IAS Critical Disability Studies Research Colloquium, a lecture by Professor Sara M. Acevedo (Miami University) called "Toward a Neuroqueer Politics in the Classroom: Cunning Embodiment and the Limits of *This* Order."

This talk stems from a series of meditations on autistic ontoepistemology and medical coding as symbolic violence. While foregrounding the material impact of symbolic violence on lifeforms marked as “disorderly” and thus inherently “out of place,” this colloquium presentation operationalizes Deleuze’s critique of “common sense” to challenge the modern coding of autism as a form of neuropathology. Using her lived experiences as an autistic woman of color, Professor Acevedo draws on spatial politics and critical autism studies to offer a neurosomatic prefiguration of a more just future for autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people who often navigate predominantly non-disabled spaces.

Bio:
Sara M. Acevedo is an autistic Mestiza educator and disability justice scholar activist born and raised in Colombia, South America. She is Assistant Professor of Disability Studies and faculty associate at the Doris Bergen Center for Human Development, Learning and Technology at Miami University. Professor Acevedo’s scholarship combines disability anthropology and critical disability studies with a focus on autism and neurodiversity. Her research explores the productive intersection of spatial politics, self-governance, and transgressive discourse. She is on the Board of Directors of the Society for Disability Studies and serves on the Editorial Boards of Disability and the Global South: The International Journal and Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture.

[Photo of Professor Acevedo sitting on the bench at Miami’s campus on a sunny Fall afternoon. She is a light-skinned Mestiza with short curly brown hair in a plaid jacket, white jeans, blue pants, and maroon boots. She is holding a framed proclamation and presidential medallion to her side. Her service dog Coco, a black standard poodle, stands next to her with his head slightly lowered and placed across her lap. She rests one hand on his shoulder..]

Free and open to the public.

RSVP using this link to get the Zoom link and submit access information: https://z.umn.edu/cdsrc-rsvp-saramacevedo

The CDSRC events are enabled by funding from the UMN Institute for Advanced Studies and are co-sponsored by the Critical Disability Studies Collective; the Race, Indigeneity, Gender, and Sexual Studies (RIGS) Initiative, the Department of American Studies, and the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.