• Taking a Woman’s Pain Seriously

    The first time must have been a year or two ago, but I dismissed it, thinking it was nothing more than a muscle cramp or leftover period pain. It made its appearance then left, so there was nothing left to think about. Yet, it persisted. Occasionally throbbing or stabbing me. I was fine though, for… Continue Reading

  • Hearing Happiness: Fakes, Frauds, and Fads in Deafness Cures

    I’m happy to announce that I signed a contract with University of Chicago Press to publish my first book, Hearing Happiness: Fakes, Frauds, and Fads in Deafness Cures. The book explores the history of therapeutic choices and negotiations respecting “deafness cures,” including Eustachian tube catheterization, artificial eardrums, electrical apparatuses, the fenestration operation, and an abundance… Continue Reading

  • [My Guest Post] Deafness as a Public Health Issue

    In May, I took up my position as the 2016 Klemperer Fellow in the History of Medicine at the New York Academy of Medicine. Thanks to the wonderful staff there, especially Arlene Shanter, I was able to dig through the library’s trove of materials on otologists in the 1920s and 1930s and their collaborations with social… Continue Reading

  • Deaf Soundscapes

    This is the story of how my professor threw chalk at me. During my second year of undergraduate studies, I took a Philosophy of Mind class that started at 8:30am. I’m far from what you would call a “morning person,” but that was the year I was steadfastly increasing my love affair with cognitive science… Continue Reading

  • ELLE Geeks

    I’m thrilled to share that I’m interviewed in the August 2014 issue of ELLE India magazine as a feature on “ELLE GEEKS:” talented women who use science and technology to push boundaries of what we know and how we should think about the world. I’m incredibly honored to be featured alongside some amazingly talented women, all of… Continue Reading

  • Switching On Hearing

    It’s an iconic and powerful photo. The face of a young child, born deaf, hearing sounds for the first time. Jack Bradley, photojournalist from the Peoria Journal Star, captured the exact moment a doctor fitted five year old Harold Whittles with an earpiece and turned on the hearing aid. First printed in the February 1974… Continue Reading

  • The Pressures of Silence

    I’ve been busy this month helping my mom organize the boxes of photographs and old documents at her house. The best part of this project? When I come across documents from my childhood that I’ve long forgotten about, but thanks to my mom, have been carefully preserved. When I was 12, my English assignment was… Continue Reading

  • On Sharing #histmed Images

    For those who follow me on Twitter or the FTHOQ Facebook page, you already know I share a lot of images on the history of medicine. I’ve come across many of these images while browsing through online archives collection data for my research on experiences of hearing and hearing loss in twentieth-century America. I’m particularly… Continue Reading

  • Green Light: Mr D.

    This is the fifth installment of my autobiographical series on my experiences with hearing loss. You can view earlier posts: Prologue; Chapter 1: Seeing Sounds; Chapter 2: Fearless Leader; Chapter 3: The Black Box. Posts appear every other Friday.  Sometime when I was six or seven, I was sent to a new school. It was far from our residence, which… Continue Reading

  • Green Light: The Black Box

    III: The Black Box.   This is the fourth installment of my autobiographical series on my experiences with hearing loss. You can view earlier posts: Prologue; Chapter 1: Seeing Sounds; Chapter 2: Fearless Leader. Posts appear every other Friday.  The moment you realize you can communicate and others can understand you, is when your world… Continue Reading