By on March 14, 2023 - 10:41am
Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History
At the age of four, Jaipreet Virdi’s world went silent. A severe case of meningitis left her alive but deaf, suddenly treated differently by everyone. Her deafness was downplayed by society and doctors, and she struggled to “pass” as hearing for most of her life. Countless cures, treatments, and technologies led to dead ends. Never quite deaf enough for the Deaf community or quite hearing enough for the “normal” majority, she was stuck in aural limbo for years. It wasn’t until her thirties, exasperated by problems with new digital hearing aids, that she began to actively assert her deafness and reexamine society’s—and her own—perception of life as a deaf person in America. Join Dr. Jaipreet Virdi on April 26 as she reflects on her experience and raises pivotal questions about deafness in American society and the endless quest for a cure.
Dr. Virdi is an award-winning historian whose research focuses on the ways medicine and technology impact the lived experiences of disabled people. She has published articles on diagnostic technologies, audiometry, hearing aids, and the medicalization of deafness. She currently teaches courses on disability histories, the history of medicine, and health activism in the Department of History at the University of Delaware and serves as Co-Director of the Hagley Program in the History of Capitalism, Technology, and Culture.
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