This is a talk taken from a chapter of the speaker’s forthcoming book «Poornography: how those with money depict those without». There is a genre of writing, art, and filmmaking that is largely created by middle- and upper-class artists who are making works for middle-class audiences. These works are replete with cliches about the poor-largely based on unsupported biocultural assumptions. In this talk Davis will present the stereotypes and the facts that debunk those stereotypes.

Bio note

Lennard J. Davis is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Science - Disability and Human Development - in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois - Chicago (USA). His research has been devoted to the study of biocultures, disability, the construction of normality, deafness and the intersection of culture, medicine, disability, biotechnology, and the biosphere. Davis is the author and editor of numerous books including: Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (Verso, 1995), The Disability Studies Reader (, Routledge, 1997 (4th Ed., 2013)), The End of Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era (University of Michigan Press, 2013), Obsession: A History (University of Chicago Press, 2008). He also coedited several books, including: The Disability Handbook (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Disability and Social Theory: New Developments and Directions (Palgrave, 2012). Davis new book, forthcoming in 2024, Poornography: How Those With Money Depict Those Without, is devoted to analyse the representations of poverty.

Co-organized by the Doctoral Programme Human Rights in Contemporary Societies.