Enabling and “Cripping” the Back-to-the-Land Movement (Spring Webinar 3 of 4)

(DIS)COURSES: Interdisciplinary Disability Dialogues – Spring 2022 Webinar Series

Join the Burton Blatt Institute’s (BBI) Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach (OIPO) (https://bbi.syr.edu/projects/oipo/) and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature (https://wordgathering.com/) for the latest in an exciting, ongoing webinar series on disability literature, media, and the arts, focusing on critical reflection, teaching, and research in today’s world. The Spring 2022 Webinar Series is in four parts.

Enabling and “Cripping” the Back-to-the-Land Movement (Spring Webinar 3 of 4)
With Clark A. Pomerleau
Monday, April 11, 2022
12:00-1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, VIA Zoom
Register for this event:
https://syracuseuniversity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_C5njGOWjRauVTpwJj-O-qA

From a disability studies perspective, it seems obvious that calls for homesteading have been ableist. Economic subsistence or profit from gardening, farming, or livestock management has required high executive function to plan and organize people’s heavy physical exertion. Scholars have assessed the claims that white, middle-class men without agricultural experience could leave urban problems to live off their garden and a cash crop they sold to buy other needs. Focusing on disability, though, remains an underused way to analyze actual practice. The homesteading endeavor enabled liberal social contract theory in U.S. history, which decides people’s value based on their utility due to their predictable ability to engage in labor. Disability analysis helps us determine in what cases Americans could “crip” homesteading to make it accessible to varying mental health and physical needs. I use my archival research into the famous homesteading advice and practice of Helen and Scott Nearing and oral histories of back-to-the-landers who were influenced by them from 1965 through the 1980s to consider how actual people have been successful and unsuccessful in accommodating homestead gardening to anxiety, depression, and declines in physicality and cognition.
Learn more about Prof. Clark A. Pomerleau

The Spring 2022 (Dis)courses Series is sponsored by the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach (OIPO) at the Burton Blatt Institute (BBI) at Syracuse University and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, with very special thanks to the Syracuse University Libraries, and with additional support from the Center on Disability and Inclusion, the Central New York Humanities Corridor Health Humanities Working Group (Medicine, Disease, Disability, and Culture), the Consortium for Culture and Medicine, Cultural Foundations of Education, Dept. of Biology, Dept. of English, Dept. of History, Dept. of Women’s and Gender Studies, the Disability Cultural Center, Disability Studies, The Graduate School, Hendricks Chapel, Information Technology Services, the Intergroup Dialogue Program, La Casita Cultural Center, the LGBTQ Resource Center, LGBTQ Studies, the Renée Crown University Honors Program, the School of Education, and the Syracuse University Humanities Center.

American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation, live captioning, and image descriptions will be provided during each event. Additional accommodations requests for each event can be made when registering via Zoom. The events will be recorded, and accessible videos will be shared publicly on the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs and Outreach (OIPO) website (https://bbi.syr.edu/projects/oipo/).

Copies of selected texts will be available for purchase via the Syracuse University Campus Store (https://www.syrcampusstore.com/books/office-of-interdisciplinary-programs-and-outreach-events).

Visit (Dis)courses online (https://bbi.syr.edu/projects/oipo/discourses/) to register for the Zoom webinars and learn more about the series and our co-sponsors.

Questions? Contact us via email at oipo@syr.edu.

To download a PDF copy of the print poster, visit: https://bbi.syr.edu/projects/oipo/discourses/discourses-spring-2022-series-poster-final/.

A QR code linking to the (Dis)courses website is in the lower right corner of the poster.

Original series poster designed by Professor Emily Vey Duke