Expert of hearing history set to present at the 14th annual Richard B. Davis MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lecture held at UNMC
Jaipreet Virdi, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Delaware, is presenting at the 14th annual Richard B. Davis, MD, PhD, History of Medicine Lecture on April 14 from noon to 1 p.m. ET.
The lecture, titled “Negotiating Normalcy: Deafness Cures in American History,” will be a hybrid event located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) College of Public Health auditorium, room 3013, as well as on Zoom (registration required). An American Sign Language interpreter will be present, and Zoom captioning will be available.
Virdi is an historian of medicine, technology and disability, and has focused her research on the ways medicine and technology impact people with disability. She is the author of Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History, is co-editor of Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, Legacies, Interventions, and has published articles on diagnostic technologies, audiometry and the medicalization of deafness.
Focusing on the marketing of cures for deafness—hearing trumpets, electrotherapy apparatuses, and hearing aids—Virdi’s presentation is centered on the ways deaf people sought to restore or gain hearing throughout history. The history, according to Virdi, provides a broad context for understanding the lived experiences of deaf people and how cultural pressures of normalcy significantly stigmatized deafness.
The library will hold a drawing for Virdi’s book, Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History. Entries can be made online.
Boxed lunches will be available to the first 50 in-person attendees.
Source: Heather Brown, McGoogan Health Sciences Library, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Images: University of Nebraska Medical Center
