Keynote Speaker: Dr. Sarah Orem – University of Southern California
“White Genius, Black Disaster: Race in Critical OCD Studies.”

The theme of this year’s OCD in Society conference is “the Future of Critical OCD Studies”. The goal of the event is to explore how the humanities, qualitative social sciences, activism, or the arts can offer perspectives on ways to understand and raise awareness about obsessive-compulsive disorder. This conference aims to offer a counterbalance to a predominant focus on epidemiology, assessment, and treatment within academic and clinical literature on OCD. While these approaches can offer insights on ways to address the suffering associated with OCD, they also frequently overlook the ways that people make sense of OCD in their lived experiences and how the condition is interrelated with social structures. By taking up the above theme, this conference seeks to spark conversation about ways to understand and theorize OCD from diverse viewpoints and explore how experiences of OCD can offer a critical lens on broader society.

The conference is sponsored by the University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies, the University of Michigan School of Social Work, and the University of Michigan Department of Anthropology. It will take place online over Zoom on May 28-29, 2021.

Registration Instructions:
This conference is free and open to the public. Please register at the conference website below.
https://ocdinsociety.wixsite.com/home