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Click the image to the left or follow the link below for a full listing of events at the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia this semester.

WCEE Winter Events

CREES Noon Lecture. The Past, Present and Future of Disability Rights in Ukraine

Sarah D. Phillips, professor of anthropology and director, Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
12:00-1:30 PM
1636 School of Social Work Building Map
In her 2011 book Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine (Indiana U Press), Phillips documented some of the significant strides that the disability rights movement in contemporary Ukraine has made in securing rights and recognition for people with disabilities. She argued that by mobilizing a set of narratives that emphasize both socialist-era attention to collectivism, entitlements and state support, as well as more individualist, consumer-based narratives privileging self-sufficiency, people with disabilities in postsocialist societies such as Ukraine are enacting a new kind of “mobile citizenship” to create and access opportunities for rehabilitation, education, and employment.

How have disability rights changed during the last 5-10 years in Ukraine? What effects have the Ukrainian (Maidan) revolution of 2014-15 and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine had on the disability rights movement, especially with thousands of veterans with disabilities returning from the front? What might the future of disability rights in Ukraine look like?

In this lecture Phillips considers how recent events have impacted disability rights initiatives in Ukraine by tracking the ongoing life trajectories of the “heroes” of her 2011 book—men and women living with serious physical disabilities—to ask whether people with disabilities in Ukraine are still “mobile citizens” making successful claims for individual and collective rights in a war-torn country in deep economic, social and political crisis.

Sarah D. Phillips is professor of anthropology and director of the Russian and East European Institute (REEI) at Indiana University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. Her research specialties are in gender, health, disability, social movements, and identity politics in the former Soviet Union, especially Ukraine. Phillips has published two books with Indiana University Press, Women’s Social Activism in the New Ukraine: Development and the Politics of Differentiation (2008) and Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine (2011). She is currently co-investigator on a collaborative four-year research project at the intersection of anthropology and public health called “A Novel, Bottom-up Approach to HIV prevention among Injecting Drug Users in Ukraine.” Phillips teaches courses in the Anthropology of Russia and East Europe, Postsocialist Gender Formations, and Medical Anthropology, as well as the REEI MA Capstone seminar.

Part of the Minorities series which will focus on the fates and challenges various minorities face, from ethnic and racial groups to people with disabilities and members of LGBT communities. How do different political regimes come to define groups as minorities, and how do they engage with them as a result? What can the experience of minorities in the other parts of the world teach us?
Building: School of Social Work Building
Event Type: Lecture / Discussion
Tags: AEM Featured, Anthropology, Diversity, European, Inclusion, International
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, International Institute, Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia

Videos of programs organized by WCEE affiliates are posted on the CES, CCPS, and CREES websites.

Videos of select events are also available on the University of Michigan's YouTube Channel.