The Disability Studies Programs at the CUNY School of Professional Studies is excited to welcome Dr. Michele Friedner, a medical anthropologist in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago, for our spring special topics lecture.  

Renowned for her research on disability and deafness as categories and experiences, Dr. Friedner will bring to life her research trajectory, illustrating her earlier work and moving from stigma to different kinds of value in relation to disability. She will explore new programs in India and elsewhere that are focused on cochlear implantation and what those mean for familial and societal expectations, particularly in relation to what is "normal." Through the discussion, she will encourage the audience to think about the difference between habilitation and rehabilitation and the stakes of both.

Her first book, Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India, looks at the practices and aspirations of deaf Indian Sign Language speakers in India as they attempt to create inhabitable worlds for themselves. Dr. Friedner is now working on a second book looking at India's new cochlear implant infrastructures-- both public and private-- for deaf people, which is provisionally titled "Becoming Normal: Cochlear Implants and Sensory Infrastructures in India." Dr. Friedner has also published on disability more broadly in India and is interested in what disability and deafness as categories and experience does and how it is valued and negotiated as people work to create inhabitable worlds for themselves.  

Dr. Mariette Bates and Dr. Cassandra Evans, both of the CUNY SPS Disability Studies Programs, will moderate the discussion and audience Q&A.