Speaking

David is an entertaining and dynamic speaker. He combines personal anecdotes, stories drawn from around the world and history, and hard data to support his conclusions.

Take a look at this collection of published work to get a sense of his range of topics. David can help you:

• build a more publicly engaged student body or organization 
• reimagine your work or institutional culture to be more diverse, inclusive, and integrated with the rest of life.
• show academics, activists, and students how to take their insights to the public.
• teach about the key stories you might have missed.

• Neo-Nazis and the Middle Ages: Global white supremacy has become newly fascinated by their imaginary Middle Ages. Fueled by video games, meme culture, fandoms, and, yes, history and even some historians, white supremacists have constructed a version of the Middle Ages that idealizes Western Europe as white, isolated, purely Christian, patriarchal (and misogynistc), and organized militarily around the defense of purity against non-Christian non-white foes. The global white supremacist community, divorced from any grounding in particular place and moving with the speed of gamergate, is infiltrating classrooms and other forms of pop culture, serving as a gateway to more active engagement in this harmful ideology. We’ve got to fight back.

• Universal Design for Work/Life Balance: As a working dad sharing fully in all the details of parenting, I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to make it all fit together. In this talk, I draw from the history of the disability rights movement to offer a completely new way to think about integrating work and life. It’s time to move past accommodating specific needs and building a culture that keeps us all whole. 

• Higher Ed and Free Speech: Higher Education has a lot of big and important problems, but the “free speech” and “trigger warning” issues that get so much attention just aren’t among them. In this talk, I lay out the state of higher education, make a case for the importance of the humanities, and explain why the “free speech” issue is a red herring in the face of systemic and well-funded threats.

• Disability Rights are Human Rights: Too often disability rights get relegated to a niche issue. But disability is not a niche; it’s a fundamental aspect of humanity. This talk looks at the history of the disability rights movement, but focuses on the challenges ahead, considering policy, technology, stigma, and violence. 

• Beyond the Accommodation Letter – Building a more inclusive classroom. The delivery of an accommodation letter should be the beginning of a conversation between professor and student, rather than the end of the matter. In this workshop, faculty learn how to initiate and sustain this kind of conversation with their students, and why doing so has the potential to positively transform their classroom for everyone, including themselves. David draws on his own experiences as both a teacher and a dyslexic but undiagnosed student. 

• Go Public – Public Humanities in the 21st Century: There is no ivory tower. Universities have never been more connected, for both good and bad, with the world at large. But how do experts get their ideas to a wider public? I address this topic either in a talk, a half-day, or a whole-day workshop. I explain not only why going public matters, but the tips and tricks to writing pitches, promoting your work, and getting paid. For faculty and graduate students considering alt-academic or diversified academic careers. For more information on the workshop – see this detailed flyer.

Contact David Perry at lollardfish@gmail.com to arrange an event.