Rethinking Disability on Screen…

I’m honored to have my paper on disability and Iranian cinema, “From Leprosy to The Willow Tree: Decoding Disability & Islamic Spirituality in Iranian Film,” shared today at the Rethinking Disability on Screen symposium at the University of York. Since my last publication on Iranian film explored the earliest films ever produced in Iran (the chapter “Iranian-Russian Cinematic Encounters” in the book Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions since 1800), I’m very pleased to have the opportunity today to share my current research on more recent award-winning Iranian films.

In the introduction to the 2013 edited collection Different Bodies: Essays on Disability in Film and Television, Marja Evelyn Mogk argues that “a gap between film studies and disability studies” still remains; “few film scholars appear familiar with disability studies”, and whilst “some disability studies scholars have a depth of experience in film theory, technical terminology or practice […] more are needed.” This one-day interdisciplinary symposium at the University of York will seek to bridge this gap. Bringing together UK postgraduates, early career researchers, established scholars and practitioners, working across a range of fields and disciplines, it aims to explore the ways in which cinema, television and other screen media have reflected – and shaped – subjective and objective experiences of impairment and disability throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our aims are to enable constructive, interdisciplinary conversations on existing scholarship, to discuss new avenues of potential enquiry and to promote interest and growth in this important but relatively under-studied area.