What is disability good for? A lecture in the Humanities Research Group’s Distinguished Speakers Series will explore this question—and some answers—on February 28.

The eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries aimed to rid society of disability and, by extension, disabled people, says Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, professor of women’s studies at Emory University.

She will put forward a range of counterarguments in her free public lecture, entitled “Why Disability? Or Who Should and Should Not Inhabit the World?” Dr. Garland-Thompson is the author of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature, which frames disability as a minority discourse rather than a medical one, revising oppressive narratives and revealing liberatory ones.

Thursday’s event is set for 7 p.m. in Assumption University’s Freed Orman Centre; a reception will follow.