Presented by Tobin Siebers, V. L. Parrington Collegiate Professor

The topic "Arts & Bodies" inevitably raises questions such as, "Whose bodies?" "What kind of bodies?" "What bodies does a culture envision when it thinks about 'art'?" Tobin Siebers, author of eight books, including Disability Theory (U-M Press, 2008), addresses these questions and others in his Monday evening talk. "What I am calling disability aesthetics," Siebers writes in his seminal, eponymous article, "names a critical concept that seeks to emphasize the presence of disability in the tradition of aesthetic representation. Disability aesthetics refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body– and its definition of harmony, integrity, and beauty–as the sole determination of the aesthetic. It is not a matter of representing the exclusion of disability from aesthetic history, since such an exclusion has not taken place, but of making the influence of disability obvious. This goal may take two forms: 1) to establish disability as a critical framework that questions the presuppositions underlying definitions of aesthetic production and appreciation; 2) to establish disability as a significant value in itself worthy of future development."