7 May 2021
9am-11.30am CDT (GMT-5): Workshop “The Body in Psychoanalysis” — Register Here
This workshop centers on the (symptomatic) body in psychoanalysis and invites graduate students and early career scholars to discuss their work-in-progress with peers and the keynote speaker, Dr. Jamieson Webster.
5pm CDT (GMT-5): Jamieson Webster, “Conversion Disorder: The Desire for Change” — Register Here
The diagnosis of Conversion Disorder is the last remnant left of hysteria in the DSM. However, the concept of conversion is key to Freud’s understanding of hysteria, perhaps even more important than the term hysteria itself which has a long history going back to the Greeks. Conversion can be seen as a question about psychoanalysis itself; not only as the kind of quasi-religious turning point in the strange life of a psychoanalyst—the move from analysand to psychoanalyst, from psychoanalyst to training analyst—but also what psychoanalysis is founded on in terms of its relationship to libidinal transformations. Conversion shows us the potential or power of the libidinal body, one that can wreak real havoc at times, but which is there— alive, unpacifiable. Conversion is about the demand for structural change.
While this talk will trace conversion as a psychoanalytic concept, I would also like to make a leap into our current troubled times: perhaps we might think of recent events from the Coronavirus Pandemic to Black Lives Matter—which center the body, its life and the care of it, at the heart of political and communal questions—as touching on a present-day conversion disorder and the demand for radical change.
14 May 2021
2pm CDT (GMT-5): Christopher Lane, “On the Entanglements of Bio and Psyche, Past and Present” — Register Here
Between 1897 and 1915, with the abandonment of his seduction theory and the publication of his unfinished Papers on Metapsychology, Freud radically denatured prior conceptions of biological instincts and supposedly “congenital” object choice in humans, substituting the term “drive” (Trieb) for “instinct” (Instinkt) to mark us as subjects in language. Instead of “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes,” Lacan later quipped, it would better to think of us as dealing with “Drives and Their Adventures.”
The implications of Freud’s shift might have been world-changing, but for complex reasons it never took off. Folded back into current debates about essentialism and constructivism, it complicates both while resetting discussion about causality. As we wrestle today with attempts to formulate “biopsychosocial” approaches to everything from desire to distress and disorder, with evolutionary psychology standing firm on our supposedly immutable instincts, what could Freud’s occluded theory from a century ago bring to our understanding of sexuality, object choice, determinism, and psychical emancipation and freedom?
3.30-6pm CDT (GMT-5): Workshop, “The Medicalized Body” — Register Here
This workshop centers on the medicalization of the (symptomatic) body and invites graduate students and early career scholars to discuss their work-in-progress with peers and the keynote speaker, Prof. Christopher Lane
21 May 2021
10-11am CDT (GMT-5): Venus Ginés, “Compartiendo el Cafe y Chocolate: Learning about Emotional Well-Being & Stress in the Latinx Community” — Register Here
This presentation introduces the Compartiendo el Café y Chocolate Workshops, created by Día de la Mujer Latina. There are two main objectives of CCC workshops:
1. The first objective is to help participants understand how stress affects the community, the body, the mind, and the spirit. These workshops focus on specific attention to the unique stressors that communities face. Stress is sometimes the primary cause of many different types of physical illnesses, mental health problems, problems within communities, and may cause a decline in our spirituality. However, if participants are aware of how stress can affect them negatively, they can consider different ways of coping with stress, leading to healthier and happier lives.
2. The second objective is to help participants understand that they are not alone in the experience of stress. Health comes through a healthy community. These workshops will connect participants through shared stories, allowing participants to share their experiences, learn, and set goals to deal with stress in various ways.
11.30am-1pm CDT (GMT-5): Workshop, “The Body in Activism” -- Register Here
This workshop centers on the (symptomatic) body in activism and invites graduate students and early career scholars to discuss their work-in-progress with peers and the keynote speaker, Venus Ginés
28 May 2021
12pm CDT (GMT-5): Travis Chi Wing Lau, “On the Pain of Poetry” — Register Here
This talk will be a meditation on my poetic practice and formation as a crip poet in relation to my scholarly work in health humanities and disability studies. I hope to think with the group about the limits of Elaine Scarry's claim that pain is antithetical to language—that it necessarily destroys it—and how this claim has been one that my work has attempted to respond to over and over again through poetic form. Does pain have its own form and does poetry provide new ways of thinking through pain and its vicissitudes? Does the work of poetry offer new cripistemologies—or disabled ways of knowing—that can radically transform how we relate with and care for people living with pain?
2-4.30pm CDT (GMT-5): Workshop, “The Body in Poetry,” with Katie Condon — Register Here
This workshop invites participants to explore writing the(ir) body in poetry. The workshop is led by poet Katie Condon, and no experience or pre-circulated work is necessary to participate.