Making up autism: public lecture by Professor Ian Hacking today
Professor Ian Hacking of the University of Toronto and the Collège de France is to deliver the inaugural C. L. Oakley Lecture in Medicine and the Arts, entitled "Making Up Autism", at Leeds today.
How was autism shaped from its beginning, as a rare infantile disorder first recognized in the 1940s, to its present much-publicized state in which it is almost regarded as common? How did it come into being and develop as a new way in which to be a person, a way in which to think of oneself, of people one cares about? There are many ways to explain the increasingly common diagnosis with invoking an ‘epidemic’ as in the media. The lecture will discuss how autism was shaped over the course of a few decades, with an emphasis not on numbers or on social services, but rather on how a new kind of person can come into being in what is living memory.
Read more on Prof. Hacking's writings on autism and on the 'making up people' project generally.
The lecture will take place:
On: Monday 13 May 2013
At: 5.15-6.45pm
In: Rupert Beckett Lecture Theatre, Michael Sadler Building
This public lecture will form part of a two-day programme of events at Leeds involving Prof. Hacking. Tomorrow morning (Tuesday 14 May), he will be leading a follow-up seminar for postgraduate students, exploring further the themes of the lecture the previous evening. Although space in this seminar is very limited, it is open to postgraduate students from any institution. Interested students should contact Greg Radick as soon as possible.
Later tomorrow, at 3 pm, Prof. Hacking will present a talk in the Leeds Philosophy seminar series on the larger philosophical project on "making up people" from which his recent work on autism arises. This talk will take place in the Miall Lecture Theatre. Again, all are welcome.
An audio podcast of "Making Up Autism" will be made available in due course at the website of the British Society for the History of Science, which has generously provided funding in support of this event.
For more information about any aspect of the two-day programme, please contact Stuart Murray, or Greg Radick.
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