APRIL 2015 NEURODIVERSITY UNIVERSITY SYMPOSIUM

LOCATION: UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS-AMHERST

Free & open to the public.

Three events:

 

 

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015, 4:00-5:30pm

FIVE COLLEGE FACULTY ROUNDTABLE ON AUTISM

Location: Integrative Learning Center, room N 211, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Informal conversation about autism-related research and teaching with Five College faculty members including    

               

Mary Andrianopoulos (Communication Disorders, UMass)                                

Kristin Bumiller (Political Science, Amherst College)

Jared Schwartzer (Psychology & Education, Mount Holyoke)

 

 

 

THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015, 7:30pm

 FILM:  CinemAbility special advance-release screening

Location: Communication Department “Hub” 3rd floor Integrative Learning Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

 

Introduction by Professor Marty Norden, Department of Communication

(author of The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Disability in the Movies)

Post-screening Skype Q&A with director Jenni Gold

 

 

 

 

FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2015, 5:00pm

KEYNOTE TALK by guest scholar Marsha Kinder:

"Voices from the Spectrum: Autism, Neurodiversity and Representation"

Location: Communication Department “Hub” 3rd floor Integrative Learning Center, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

 

A reception will follow.

 

Marsha Kinder began her career in the 1960s as a scholar of eighteenth century English Literature before moving to the study of transmedial relations among narrative forms. In 1980 she joined USC’s School of Cinematic Arts where she continued to be an academic nomad, with narrative as her through-line. Having published over one hundred essays and ten books (both monographs and anthologies), she is best known for her work on Spanish film, specifically Blood Cinema (1993); children’s media, especially Playing with Power in Movies, Television and Video Games (1991); and digital culture (including her new anthology Transmedia Frictions: The Digital, The Arts and the Humanities (2014), co-edited with Tara McPherson. She was founding editor of innovative journals, such as Dreamworks (1980-87), winner of a Pushcart Award, USC’s Spectator (1982-present) and since 1977 served on the editorial board of Film Quarterly. In 1995 she received the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Scholarship, and in 2001 was named a University Professor for her innovative transdisciplinary research.

 

In 1997 she founded The Labyrinth Project, a USC research initiative on database narrative, producing award-winning database documentaries and new models of digital scholarship. In collaboration with media artists Rosemary Comella, Kristy Kang and Scott Mahoy, and with filmmakers, scientists and cultural institutions, Labyrinth produced 12 multimedia projects that were featured at museums, film and new media festivals, and conferences worldwide. Kinder’s latest work, Interacting with Autism, is a video-based website produced in collaboration with Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Mark Jonathan Harris, Scott Mahoy and Ioana Uricaru. Since retiring from teaching in Summer 2013, Kinder is now writing a new book titled Narrative in the Age of Neuroscience: The Discreet Charms of Serial Autobiography.