News Release
University of Illinois at Chicago Office of Public Affairs (MC 288)
601 S. Morgan St., Chicago, IL 60607-7113, (312) 996-3456, www.news.uic.edu
Release Date:
June 29, 2004
Media Contact:
Paul Francuch, (312) 996-3457, [log in to unmask]
Seminar Explores Germany's Eugenics Legacy
A month-long seminar in Germany, organized by two University of Illinois at
Chicago disability studies experts, will consider the topic, "Disability
Studies and the Legacies of Eugenics."
An interdisciplinary panel of experts from the United States, Canada and
Germany will discuss the contemporary situation of disabled people in Germany
by assessing facts behind the Nazi killings of more than 240,000 disabled
people during World War II.
The seminar takes place July 5-30 at Germany's Einstein Forum at the
University of Potsdam.
Sharon Snyder, UIC assistant professor of disability and human development,
organized and will direct the seminar. David Mitchell, UIC associate professor
of disability and human development, will serve as co-director. Sander Gilman,
UIC distinguished professor of the liberal arts and sciences and medicine, is
a seminar adviser.
Seminar participants will assess Germany's legacy of the now-underground
eugenics movement by reviewing the development and growth of disability
studies in the country and the effects it has had on fields such as education,
medicine, rehabilitation, genetics and bio-ethics. Each of the seminar's 19
participants has either developed a disabilities studies program or taught a
course on the subject at their respective university. Most of the participants
themselves have disabilities.
"Participants include many bio-ethicists as well as historians," said Snyder.
"The group will pursue new knowledge about the politics and practices of
disability in scientific fields today and in the past."
An exhibition entitled "The Imperfect Person" shown this past year at Berlin's
Gropius Bau and the Dresden Hygiene Museum has attracted considerable German
public and scholarly interest in the history and culture of people with
disabilities and the relationship of that culture to scholarship and politics.
In conjunction with the seminars, four public lectures will be delivered on
related subjects. Two of the talks will be by German disability studies
scholars Anne Waldschmidt of the Universit„t zu K”ln, and Katrin Gruber of the
IMEW Institut Mensch, Ethik, und Wissenschaft, Berlin. UIC's Snyder and
Mitchell will lecture and show a film they made.
The summer seminar is held annually by the Einstein Forum and sponsored by the
Forum and the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer
Austausch Dienst).
This year's sponsors include the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, UIC's
Humanities Laboratory, the UIC department of disability and human development,
and the Ph.D. program in disability studies.
For more information about the summer institute, contact Sharon Snyder,
[log in to unmask] For more information about UIC, visit www.uic.edu
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