Deaf and Incarcerated in the U.S.
An anthropologist investigates how U.S. prison policies systematically deny deaf incarcerated people adequate access to hearing aids—severely hindering their sensory engagement and quality of life.
Michele Friedner
Michele Friedner is a medical anthropologist who studies deafness and disability in India and the United States. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley–University of California, San Francisco Joint Medical Anthropology Program and is currently an assistant professor in the department of comparative human development at the University of Chicago. Friedner is the author of Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India and Sensory Futures: Deafness and Cochlear Implant Infrastructures in India (forthcoming). She is currently working on a project, funded by the National Science Foundation, to study different therapeutic approaches to deafness internationally and the ways that technologies such as cochlear implants both expand and contract sensory and relational possibilities.