Episodes

  • Vanessa Warne, "By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

    Vanessa Warne, "By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
    Sep 27 2025
    By Touch Alone: Blindness and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Culture (U Michigan Press, 2025) by Dr. Vanessa Warne demonstrates how reading by touch not only changed the lives of nineteenth-century blind people, but also challenged longstanding perceptions about blindness and reading. Over the course of the nineteenth century, thousands of blind people learned how to read by touch. Using fiction, essays, letters, and speeches authored by blind readers, By Touch Alone traces the ways in which literacy changed blind people's experiences of education, leisure, spirituality, and social engagement. Analyzing records of activism and innovation as well as frustration, this study documents the development of an inkless book culture shaped by blind readers’ preferences and needs. While By Touch Alone features the writing and ideas of an understudied community of nineteenth-century blind authors, innovators, and activists, it also engages the work of sighted authors such as George Eliot and Rudyard Kipling to explore the culture-wide effects of reading by touch. The emergence of a new category of readers who did not rely on sight to read prompted sighted people to reimagine blindness and adopt more progressive attitudes toward blind people. In our own era, one characterized by the increasing digitization of our reading lives, Vanessa Warne’s exploration positions scholars and blind readers to navigate present-day developments and shape the future of their reading lives. A carefully contextualized study of how reading by touch shaped Victorian culture, By Touch Alone adds new chapters to the history of disability and reading. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    50 mins
  • Leon J. Hilton, "Counter-Cartographies: Neurodivergence and the Errancies of Performance" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Leon J. Hilton, "Counter-Cartographies: Neurodivergence and the Errancies of Performance" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Sep 2 2025
    What if we embraced neurodivergent ways of being not as deviations to be corrected but as vital ways of inhabiting the world? What new realities might emerge? Bringing a much-needed humanistic perspective to the study of autism and other forms of neurodivergence, Counter-Cartographies: Neurodivergence and the Errancies of Performance (U Minnesota Press, 2025) offers a bold reimagining of neurological difference, moving beyond rigid diagnostic frameworks to uncover more expansive, generative modes of existence. Engaging the work of Fernand Deligny to trace how modern taxonomies of neurodivergence have hardened over time, Leon J. Hilton questions how these categories might instead serve as tools for remapping the world with neurodivergence at its center. At the heart of Counter-Cartographies is an exploration of performance and performativity that reveals how the norm of neurotypical reality is continually reinforced through acts of doing, redoing, and undoing. Charting the historical shift away from “mind” and toward “brain” and moving fluidly across disciplines—from digital art and documentary cinema to cybernetics and radical mental health movements—Hilton illuminates the deep interconnections between performance, perception, and the historical construction of the “neurotypical.” Through close readings of works by William Pope.L, Mel Baggs, Wu Tsang, and others, Hilton also examines how neurodivergence has been represented, embodied, and materialized in contemporary art and media. Restless, engrossing, and persistently attuned to moments of rupture when the neurotypical order falters, Counter-cartographies charts a path toward a more capacious, imaginative world. Leon J. Hilton is assistant professor of theatre arts and performance studies and co-convener of the Disability Studies Working Group at Brown University. He is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Social Text and on the advisory board of Spectrum Theatre Ensemble, a neurodiverse theatre company based in Providence, Rhode Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    56 mins
  • Stacia Kalinoski, "Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Stacia Kalinoski, "Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Aug 20 2025
    The book, Racing Uphill: Confronting a Life with Epilepsy (U of Minnesota Press, 2025), is a memoir and an educational resource, which tells the story of an Emmy Award-winning TV news Journalist, Stacia Kalinoski. The author's aim is beyond giving an account of her experience of epilepsy, her goal is to sensitize readers and inspire epileptic patients and other people battling with ailments that carry social stigma, emphasizing the importance of taking control of one's health. In the book, Stacia Kalinoski recounts her experience of visual distortions and feelings of déjà vu and jamais vujamais vu, which are auras that often precede more severe seizures. She discusses the physical injuries and memory loss resulting from her condition, particularly from temporal lobe seizures. Stacia's narrative underscores the complexities of living with epilepsy and the potential for personal growth and empowerment through adversity. She highlights the effects of frequent episodes of seizure on maintenance of social relationships and the ability to reminisce about the past. Relating her experience, Stacia dwells on the importance of confronting the reality of living with epilepsy, she emphasizes the significance of understanding seizures to combat the stigma and fear surrounding the condition, and how surgery can improve memory loss and allow People Living with Epilepsy reconnect with their past. Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links @ (22) Olugbodi Mariam | LinkedIn, Mariam Olugbodi (0000-0001-5027-6644) - ORCID and User:Margob28 - Meta Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    31 mins
  • The Social Impact of Automating Translation

    The Social Impact of Automating Translation
    Aug 3 2025
    In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Catalunya. They talk about Dr. Monzó-Nebot's new book The Social Impact of Automating Translation: An Ethics of Care Perspective on Machine Translation. The conversation delves into ideological issues involved in the widespread use of machine translation and the real-life impact for those who may rely on machine translations in various situations. Esther’s research and the wide variety of contributions to the book highlight the need to open a discussion about instilling an ‘ethics of care’ perspective into the use of technology to make AI-generated translations more inclusive and relevant for the communities using them. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 mins
  • Ela Przybylo, "Ungendering Menstruation" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

    Ela Przybylo, "Ungendering Menstruation" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
    Jul 21 2025
    Ungendering Menstruation by Ela Przybyło discusses why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and disability. Honing a "cranky" approach to being a menstruating body expected to accept and embrace trauma, Ungendering Menstruation examines menstrual suppression, toxicity, and the cooptation of menstrual positivity rhetoric. Drawing on their own experiences as a toxic shock survivor and a menstrual pain and period dysphoria sufferer, Ela Przybyło questions why, on what terms, and for whom menstruation has been fixed around experiences of pain. Instead, they present a vision for menstrual justice that refuses the womaning of bleeding and the further erasure, dismissal, and denial of menstrual pain as real pain. If menstruating is framed as somatechnically elective, Przybyło contends, it provides avenues for both celebrating and appreciating cultures of bleeding as well as for remaining critical of the ways in which bleeding has been used as a transphobic and sexist tool to fix gender in place. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 mins
  • Fadi Zaghmout, "The Man of Middling Height" (Syracuse UP, 2025)

    Fadi Zaghmout, "The Man of Middling Height" (Syracuse UP, 2025)
    Jul 8 2025
    What if our society’s deepest prejudices weren’t about race, gender, or sexuality—but height? In his groundbreaking allegorical novel, acclaimed Jordanian author and activist Fadi Zaghmout imagines just such a world, crafting a powerful meditation on discrimination and desire that speaks directly to our contemporary debates about identity and inclusion. The Man of Middling Height (Syracuse University Press, 2025) follows a short dressmaker whose life is upended when she meets Tallan, a man whose middle height places him outside the rigid tall/short binary that governs their society. As their forbidden romance blossoms, they must navigate a world where height determines everything from social status to romantic possibilities. Through their story and those of surrounding characters—including a short person in a polyamorous relationship with two tall partners, and a tall activist who scandalously loves another tall person—Zaghmout deftly reframes contemporary discussions about gender identity and sexuality through the lens of height discrimination. Fadi Zaghmout is a Jordanian author and sexual freedoms and body rights advocate. He has published five novels, including The Bride of Amman, Heaven on Earth, Laila, and Hope on Earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    20 mins
  • Improving Quality of Care for Patients with Limited English

    Improving Quality of Care for Patients with Limited English
    Jun 25 2025
    In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Leah Karliner. Dr. Karliner is Professor in Residence in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco in the United States. She is Director of the Center for Aging in Diverse Communities and Director of the Multiethnic Health Equity Research Center. She is both a practicing general internist and a health services researcher, with expertise in practice-based and communication research. An important aspect of her scholarly work centres on improving quality of care for patients with limited English proficiency, and the goal of her research agenda is aimed at achieving health equity through improved communication and clinical outcomes. In this episode, Brynn and Leah discuss a 2024 paper that Leah co-authored entitled “Language Access Systems Improvement initiative: impact on professional interpreter utilisation, a natural experiment”. The paper details a study that investigated two ways of improving the quality of clinical care for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients in English-dominant healthcare contexts, by: Certifying bilingual clinicians to use their non-English language skills directly with patients; and Simultaneously increasing easy access to professional interpreters by instituting on-demand remote video interpretation. Brynn and Leah talk about the results of this study and what they mean for improved communication with LEP patients in healthcare. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    39 mins
  • Marc Sapir, "I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders" (2025)

    Marc Sapir, "I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders" (2025)
    Jun 21 2025
    We all hope to grow old with dignity and some joyfulness. The intimate narratives of 40 extraordinary elders shared in I'll Fly Away: Stories About Amazing Disabled Elders explore both the challenges of aging and the joys and vibrancy that often persist in the twilight years. Poignant observations of the patients and families by a team of health professionals intersecting daily at the Center for Elders' Independence in Oakland, California, reveal the complexities of aging, identity, amid the assertive persistence of the human spirit. From a couple's summer drive across the Arizona desert to a family's struggle with mental illness to patients' romantic escapades, each tale offers a unique glimpse into the resilience of individuals facing profound transitions and prompts questions about our collective responsibility to our elders. Though this book is valuable for medical and public health professionals, it especially offers families kinship, support, and inspiration. For patients and readers in general, I'll Fly Away champions the idea that every one of us is a unique person with needs, wants, and a voice that is discoverable and deserves to be heard. It embodies the notion that every life is a story, and every voice matters. Marc Sapir, a retired primary care, geriatric and public health physician, is an essayist and political activist. He was first Medical Director of the Center for Elders' Independence for disabled elders for 9 years. He is author of five plays, and also writes fiction, poetry, and music. He lives in Berkeley, CA. Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    49 mins