Join us for a group reading session of passages from McGuire’s 2016 book War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence, which examines autism as a historically specific and power-laden cultural phenomenon that has much to teach about the social organization of neoliberal western modernity. McGuire discusses how in the field of autism advocacy, autism often appears as an abbreviation, its multiple meanings distilled to various “red flag” warnings in awareness campaigns, bulleted biomedical facts in information pamphlets, or worrisome statistics in policy reports. She analyzes the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and traces their continuities to reveal an underlying, powerful, and ubiquitous logic of violence that casts autism as a pathological threat that advocacy must work to eliminate. No advance reading is required.

FREE and open to all.
Space is limited, register with Eventbrite.
Snacks and refreshments will be provided.

The e|gallery has been transformed into a Co-Creation Studio for the STIM CINEMA exhibition. It is located on the ground floor of the CCT Building and is accessible to people who use mobility devices, with doorways measuring over 32” wide. All entrances at ground floor level are equipped with power-assisted doors. The e|gallery is accessible via the east entrance (adjacent to parking lot 9) at ground level, or by elevator from the main floor entrance and at parking garage levels 1, 3, and 5. Accessible multi-user gendered washrooms are located at ground level, and accessible multi-user all-gender washrooms are located on the third floor of the CCT Building.

Anne McGuire is an associate professor and director of the program for Critical Studies in Equity and Solidarity at UofT, where she teaches courses in critical disability studies. She is the author of War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence (2016, University of Michigan Press), which received the 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities. Anne was awarded the 2016 June Larkin Pedagogy Award and the 2018 UofT Early Career Teaching Award for her work advancing collective access in the university classroom. She is also a community educator and co-author of We Move Together (AK Press, 2021), a picture book about disability justice and winner of the Harriet McBryde Johnson Award for NonFiction (2022) and the 2022 ILBA silver medal for best educational education children's picturebook in English.