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Call for Participation: Roundtable Session Playing the disability “card”: Disability, Neoliberalism and The Academy Part of theme 8: ‘Universities/geography in Crisis’ at the Sixth International Conference of Critical Geography, Frankfurt, Germany, 16-20 August 2011 Organizer: Beth DeVolder ([log in to unmask]) This Roundtable session aims to bring together researchers concerned with institutionalized ableism and the construction and reproduction of disability within the academy. Due to the activism of disabled people, universities are increasingly aware of their legal duty to accommodate students and staff with disability. Nevertheless, some argue that the rhetoric of rights, embedded in neoliberalism, holds out the promise of equalization at the same time as it reinscribes negative ontologies (of disability) thereby reproducing both difference and discrimination. The result is “the illusion of inclusion” (Campbell, 2004, p. 119, 126). Some pressing questions for roundtable participants are: How can we break out of this double bind? Amidst the din of competing professional discourses such as medicine, law and educational psychology in the construction, governance and surveillance of disability, where are there spaces for resistance and contestation? At a practical, embodied level, how do we negotiate the everyday pragmatics and politics of disability? Contributions are encouraged from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives including (but not limited to): Crip Theory, Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Post Colonial Theory, and Critical Cultural Theory. Interlocking and intersectional analyses are especially encouraged. Please contact Beth Devolder ([log in to unmask]) prior to 1 March 2011 with expressions of interest in participating. Further information about the Sixth International Conference of Critical Geography can be obtained online: www.iccg2011.org