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Conference: The Global Cochlear Implant

October 11 - October 12

A photograph of a video installation with two large screens hung at right angles in the corner of a room. Filling each screen is a historical image in rainbow tones: on the left, a medical sketch of the inner ear; and on the right, a photograph of the back of the head of an early cochlear implant user. Overlaid in a line at the center of each screen are several other, mostly abstract images in different colors, some archival and some computer-generated. To the right of the installation is a smaller screen on a stand, on which a video of an ASL interpreter is playing, with a brightly-colored digital image of a waveform and other shapes in the background.

Image from Darrin Martin, “Listening In…

Conference: The Global Cochlear Implant

The University of Chicago

October 11-12, 2024

Room: (This conference is taking place in person only at The University of Chicago)

  • Friday: Social Science Research Building room 302
  • Saturday: Rosenwald Hall room 329

Sponsored by the University of Chicago and the NYU Center for Disability Studies, with funding from The National Endowment for the Humanities Dangers and Opportunities of Technology Program.

Co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Center for International Social Science Research, Center for East Asian Studies, and Department of Comparative Human Development Giannino Fund.

CART and ASL provided.

 

Register Here

 


Conference Program:

Friday October 11th, 2024 (Social Science Research Building room 302)

9:30-10: Introduction by Michele Friedner (University of Chicago) and Mara Mills (New York University)

10:00-10:30 Mara Mills (New York University), “There is No Such Thing as Artificial Hearing: Cochlear Implants Become Speech Processors (1964-1978)”

10:30-11:00: Soline Vennetier (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), “Shifting technology: a History of Cochlear Implants, Deafness, and the Deaf Community in France Since the 1960s”

11:00-11:30: Magnus Schaefer (McGill), “MED-EL: Naturalizing ‘Natural Hearing’”

11:30-12:00: Discussion: Histories of Cochlear Implants

12:00-1:00:  LUNCH

1:00-1:30: Kaitlin Stack Whitney (RIT), “Cochlear and neural implants beyond the human”

1:30-2:00: Corinna Hill (RIT/NTID) and Wyatte Hall (University of Rochester Medical Center), “Reality Versus Marketing: The Role and Perceptions of the Cochlear Implant as A Language Acquisition Device Throughout History”

2:00-2:15  BREAK

2:15-2:45: Sharath Chandra Ramakrishnan (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), “Regulatory concerns and unintended consequences in the assemblage of cochlear implantation”

2:45-3:15: Discussion: STS approaches to Cochlear Implants

5:00-6:00: Darrin Martin (UC Davis), Artist Talk and Screening of “Listening In…”

6:00-7:00: RECEPTION

Saturday October 12, 2024 (Rosenwald Hall room 329)

10:00-10:30: Timothy Loh (Princeton), “An expanded istifada: cochlear implants and regulating communication for deaf Jordanians”

10:30-11:00: Fulden Arisan (University of Chicago), “Globalizing Hearing Loss: Cochlear Implant Networks and Prosthetic Citizenship in Turkey”

11:00-11:15 BREAK

11:15-11:45: Theresia Hofer (University of Bristol) and Junhui Yang (University of Central Lancashire), “The Tech, the State and the People in the Routinization of Cochlear Implants in China”

11:45-12:15: Michele Friedner (University of Chicago), “Cochlear Implant Circuits: Geopolitical and Affective Hearing and Not-Hearing Mobilities and Networks in Pakistan”

12:15-1:15: Tsung-Lun Alan Wang (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University), “Linguistic entrepreneurship and cochlear implants: An ethnographic context of Taiwanese deaf adults”

1:15-2:15: LUNCH

2:15-2:45: Discussion: Ethnographies of Cochlear Implants

2:45-3:15: Lindsey D. Felt (Stanford), “Cochlear Implants and Criptech Futures”

3:15-3:45: Danielle Carr (UCLA), “Emerging Concerns in the Field of Neural Implants”

3:45-4:15 Closing Discussion: Keywords and Cross-Cutting Concepts

6:00: DINNER FOR CONFERENCE PRESENTERS

Details

Start:
October 11
End:
October 12

Organizers

NYU Center for Disability Studies
The University of Chicago
The University of Chicago Center for International Social Science Research
The University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies
The University of Chicago Department of Comparative Human Development Giannino Fund

Venue

The University of Chicago
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