Join us for our first digital HPS colloquium as Lindsey Breitwieser presents her recent research! We will meet on Zoom at 4 PM EST for a chance to catch up before the presentation begins. Bring your own snacks!
"A Crip History of Brain Death"
In this presentation, I offer early thoughts on a remediation of brain death history that highlights the entanglement of dis/ability and scientific knowledge. I will discuss the ways in which economic arguments of futile/useful care, which were fundamental to brain death conceptualization in the twentieth century, invoke what disability scholars call a "cultural logic of euthanasia." My presentation, however, eschews a critique of brain death as a step toward euthanasia and focuses instead on the ways brain death science employs discourses of futurity, potentiality, and utility to reimagine what death itself can be.
Lindsey Breitwieser recently earned her PhD in Gender Studies from Indiana University-Bloomington. She is Gender Studies' first postdoctoral fellow. Her areas of specialization include postcolonial feminist science and technology studies; disability studies; history and philosophy of medicine; medical jurisprudence; new materialisms and posthumanisms; and reproductive politics. Lindsey's dissertation, funded by a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, focused on the legalities and bioethics of postmortem pregnancies. In addition to continuing that research during her time at Notre Dame, Lindsey teaches classes for the Gender Studies Program, and assists the Reilly Center with its new Medicine and the Liberal Arts program.
Zoom Meeting ID: 204-255-056