• My Interview for “Collectors’ Weekly” on Disability in the 19th Century

    In case you missed it, this past July Collectors’ Weekly writer Lisa Hix interviewed me and Karen Bourrier for her essay, “Healing Spas and Ugly Clubs: How Victorians Taught us to Treat People with Disabilities.” It a great piece, so do check it out! Below is an extract from my interview. Ear trumpets were among the myriad… Continue Reading

  • Technology & Deafness

    What can the history of technology tell us about the lived experiences and cultural history of the hearing impaired? During the nineteenth century, acoustic aids became ubiquitous objects, varying in design, form, and amplification. The “Deafness in Disguise” exhibit at the Bernard Becker Medical Library brilliantly narrates the multitude of aids that were available for… 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

  • 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

  • Monday Series: “In the Guise of a Friend” V

    Conclusions: A Debt to Alexander the Aggressor? The deaf community was never at ease with Bell’s eugenics attempts for normalization. When the ABA’s Committee on Eugenics drafted a bill limiting marriage between “undesirables,” the deaf fought back. At his presidential address to the National Association of the Deaf, George Veditz declared that “[i]t is evident… Continue Reading

  • The Sorrows of Deafness

    If, on being introduced to a new circle, you find yourself addressing a person apparently between the ages of eighteen and thirty, who makes small or no reply even to your most piquant remarks, do not immediately set down him or her as either proud, sulky, or irremediably stupid; but let the thought suggest itself… Continue Reading

  • Monday Series: The Criminalized Body I

    Dear Reader, I thought it’d be a good idea to do a series of posts on a topic irrelevant to my own research, but which I find fascinating. The series will be posted on Mondays and the first of the series will be focused on “The Criminalized Body,” providing perspectives on body politics and anatomy legislations… Continue Reading