My Body Is Not A Prayer Request
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Dr. Amy Kenny
Amy Kenny is a disabled scholar and a Shakespeare lecturer who hates Hamlet. Recently, she was appointed the inaugural associate director of the Disability Cultural Initiative at Georgetown University, a role that seeks to celebrate the diverse disability community and cultivate a culture of access intimacy across campus.
Her book, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request, mixes humor, personal narrative, and theology to invite faith communities to rethink their unintentional ableism and learn from the embodied wisdom of disabled people. Kenny explains that it is time for the church to start treating disabled people as full members of the body of Christ who have much more to offer than a miraculous cure narrative.
Kenny’s work on disability has been featured in Teen Vogue, Sojourners, Shondaland, The Mighty, and Huff Post. She also serves as a scribe for Freedom Road Institute for Leadership and Justice, coordinates support for people experiencing homelessness in her neighborhood, and is a co-founder of Jubilee Homes OC, a permanent supportive housing initiative in her local community.
Publication(s) for this event
My Body Is Not a Prayer Request
by
Dr.
Amy
Kenny
Brazos Press (May 17, 2022)
Purchase this publication
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About Us
Our Mission
The January Series cultivates deep thought and conversations about important issues of the day in order to inspire cultural renewal and make us better global citizens in God's world.
Background
For over 30 years, the January Series of Calvin University has been one of the leading lecture/cultural arts series in the country. The series has been a three-time recipient of the Silver Bowl Award as the “Best Campus Lecture Series in the U.S.A.” by the International Platform Society. The diversity of presenters and topics has changed as the world of ideas has changed.
The foundation for excellence both in the classroom at Calvin University and at the January Series is the philosophy that an outstanding liberal arts education teaches students how to think, not what to think. We want our students to look at current ideas critically in light of history and creatively with an eye to the future. We support freedom of speech and expression; we encourage faculty, students and the community to listen to viewpoints that differ from their own. Bringing excellent speakers on a wide variety of topics to campus is one very valuable factor of education at Calvin.
Calvin University is a Christian academic community dedicated to rigorous intellectual inquiry. Located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Calvin has an enrollment of 3,800 curious and inquisitive students. The dynamic liberal arts university has been named a “Best College” by U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, The Fisk Guide, The Princeton Review and Washington Monthly. A Calvin education, marked by scholarly engagement with enduring questions and emerging concerns, prepares students to answer God’s call to live and serve in God’s world as agents of renewal.
At Calvin, the month of January is an interim term in which students are encouraged to select a course of academic enrichments not offered during the other semesters. During interim, the university sponsors the January Series, a daily, hour-long cultural enrichment series. Presented at 12:30 pm in the 1000-seat Covenant Fine Arts Center Auditorium on campus, the series is open without charge to students, faculty and the west Michigan community. Despite typical Michigan winter weather, the auditorium fills up and the audience spills over into closed-circuit television rooms as needed. Thanks to the inspiration of our founding director, June Hamersma, who served as the series director for its first 20 years, the January Series has become an important part of the cultural and educational offerings in the state and has received nationwide attention. The International Platform Society, founded by Daniel Webster in 1834, awarded the series the Silver Bowl Award for “Best Campus Lecture Series in the U.S.A.” three times (1994, 1995 & 1999) and has since retired the award. In 2008, we opened our program beyond our auditorium walls to remote sites across the country. Each year we have expanded and in 2020 we will have 60 remote sites that will watch the live presentation as part of our January Series audience. In 2019 we had a total audience of more than 78,000 people over the fifteen days of lectures.