Violence, Disability, and the Politics of Healing: The Inaugural Nancy Eiesland Endowment Lecture

Abstract

Ancient and contemporary communities frequently portray the ideal, utopian society as a place without disability. Christian, Jewish, and secular eschatologies are often potent sites of disability erasure, forms of eugenic imagination that envision liberation through the denial of bodily and sensory difference. This lecture examines the complex relationship between violence, disability, and domination—and contests notions of healing that depoliticize disability or devalue the integrity of disabled lives. Bringing sacred texts into conversation with feminist disability studies and the lived experiences of disability justice activists, the lecture offers resources for religious voices seeking to reimagine disability, healing, and liberation.