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Each year, the Hall Center looks forward to sharing exciting scholarship with our neighbors in Wichita. Held at the Wichita Art Museum, this event brings together scholars and community members from Lawrence and Wichita for a reception and lecture on topics in the medical humanities.--
Walkie Talkies & Other Technoableist Dreams
Ashley Shew
MON, NOV 9
Reception: 6:00 PM | Lecture: 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Wichita Art Museum, 1400 Museum Blvd.
To attend the pre-lecture reception, please visit bit.ly/wichita-shew. Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments will be served at the reception.
Walking and talking are treated as instrumental goods in healthcare, valued for what they do rather than what they are. Ashley Shew argues these aren’t the only ways to move through the world or connect with others: crutches, wheelchairs, AAC devices, and signed languages serve the same ends. Drawing on disability narratives, she shows how healthcare’s fixation on walking and talking often comes at the expense of what disabled people actually want and need. Through the concept of technoableism, Shew argues that “health” itself is instrumental: what matters is what health brings, and fixating on specific functions can undermine health in its truer sense of wholeness.
Shew’s research sits at the intersection of technology studies, biotech ethics, and disability studies. She received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on disability narratives about technology and leads a Mellon Foundation-funded project supporting a regional Disability Community Technology (DisCoTec) Center. She is the author of "Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement" and "Technological Knowledge and Animal Constructions," with a forthcoming textbook, "Technology and Disability," co-edited with Hanna Herdegen.
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Event venue
1400 W Museum Blvd, Wichita, KS 67203-3200, United States
Tickets
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