Episode 118 - Michele Friedner: "Thinking through disability expertise and questions of access."

 | In this episode, Medical Anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development Michele Friedner discusses her path to becoming a UChicago Professor. She describes an early interest in Indian culture that led her to study Indian religions as an undergrad, a time that vastly expanded her worldview and breadth of experience. Eventually, these varied interests coalesced around deaf and disability rights, which led her into the field of medical anthropology. Tune in to find out more about her research interest and how disabilities can be seen as strengths and impact one's life.

Transcript

Martha 00:00
Hello and welcome to The Course. I am your host today, Martha Marion, and I am here speaking with Professor Michele Friedner, a medical anthropologist and an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development. Her work explores social, moral, religious and economic practices in deaf and disabled communities with a focus on deafness in India.

She is the 2023 recipient of the Rachel Carson Prize by the Society for the Social Studies of Sciences, as well as a published scholar, including the 2015 book, Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India. She’s here to talk about her carrier path and how she became a professor at the University of Chicago.

Welcome to The Course, Professor Friedner. Michele, would you please introduce yourself?

Michele Friedner 00:21
Hi, my name is Michele Friedner, and as you said, I'm a medical anthropologist, and I teach at the University of Chicago and an interdisciplinary social science department called comparative human development, and our department is really unique in the sense that we have anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and linguists, as well as behavioral biologists, Who are all interested in thinking broadly about development of humans and non-human animals in context.

Martha 00:56
Wow, I have many questions about this, and it sounds like the interdisciplinary nature sounds pretty thrilling, and I'm sure you're having, not only interesting conversations, but doing such expansive work with all of those folks. But let's go back to the beginning. I would love to know the origin story. This is where we know you are now. But how did your interest in this field begin for you? And when was that?

Michele Friedner 01:21
So I grew up in Queens in New York. Queens is one of the boroughs and it's the most diverse borough in many ways. And when I was growing up in Queens, most of my friends are playmates in elementary school and before elementary school were from Kerala and India. Kerala is the southernmost state in India. and I hung out with, Kerela folks and with people from elsewhere in India.

And when I went to college, I decided to study religious studies and I focused mostly on Indian religions. And it was super interesting, because I just somehow stumbled upon an Indian religions class in my first year of my freshman year of college and I had this amazing professor who I still kept in touch with even when I was in graduate school and beyond.

And she started our first class by saying that she was going to teach us how to see things differently and how to think differently about the world and she wanted us to go out every night and look for the rabbit in the moon so I would do that and I would force myself to see the rabbit in the moon.

And that class of intro to Indian religions class was just such a revolutionary class for me and it really changed how I saw the world and how I thought about things like religion and about relationships with humans and non humans. And so yeah, so I took that class and then I decided to major in religious studies and those of us who study religious studies often joke that we have a new religion every semester.

And we got to experience and learn about so many different religions, and so this was at Brown University, and the religious studies department, I think, was a really warm and cozy department. It was really supportive, and we had professors who were really into also doing experiential teaching with us, so one of my professors was a Zen Buddhist monk and he had us do meditations, both walking meditations and meditations in pairs, and he also took us on field trips. And so that's why I say we've gained an experiential understanding of some of different religions. 

Martha 03:46
And how, like, you know, sort of at that time, you know, that's a very influential time of life anyway. How did you notice sort of, how did you notice yourself, your personality, your worldview expanding and changing? Like what, can you give me an example of that?

Michele Friedner 04:01
Yes. So what's interesting is, so I grew up in Queens in New York myself, as I said and neither of my parents had gone to college away from home, actually that's not true because my father had immigrated to the US, but I was the first person in my family to go away for college and to attend an elite school, like Brown University.

And so, I was surrounded by people who were very different from me, which is not to say I wasn't surrounded by people who were different from me when I was growing up, especially in Queens, but, you know, in terms of thinking about class and race and religion, these were not things that were deliberately for grounded and talked about so explicitly when I was growing up. And then I got to college and all of a sudden, these are things that we are talking about and thinking about, working hard to make sense of. And so it was a pretty profound event in my life. I mean, it was a profound period in my life to attend this university. I mean, to live away from home, to attend this university, to meet all kinds of people, to learn about different political movements and to also learn about different religions.

Martha 05:18
And at that point, as a religious studies major, what did you, what were your ideas around what you might maybe wanted to do with that, at that time? What did you think? Where did you think that was going to lead you?

Michele Friedner 05:29
So I think my freshman year and sophomore year, I had no idea what I would want to do. I know my dad, my father really wanted me to go to law school. He had a sense that I should become a lawyer and I would become settled and it would be a secure future and I was ambivalent about that and actually, after taking a few Indian religions classes. So the other thing that I did in college was between my freshman year and sophomore year, I did a program called Summer Bridge, which is an AmeriCorps program which sends college students into different communities to teach in the summer. 

And I went to do this in Portland, Oregon. And I wound up staying with the family of another Brown University student who was a few years ahead of me and her family was from Bangalore in India. And they were, they were, yeah, they were Indian and I loved staying with them and I learned more about, different kinds of Indian cultures and cuisines and ways of being in the world. And so that further developed my interest in going to India. And so I had asked my parents if I could study abroad. 

No, sorry, that's not true. I had asked my parents if I could take time off of school to go to India. And they said no, that they wouldn't allow me to do that. And so then, in my junior year, I really wanted to study abroad in India, but at that time there were not very many study abroad programs. 

And then the other thing that was a consideration for me was, because I'm deaf and use, real time captioning in my classes, my family was concerned about the Americans with Disabilities Act and its portability in other countries, and about whether there would be accommodations and others around abroad. And so, we basically decided by going to actually, I shouldn't say we, = they decided that going to India would not be a feasible option and they also, 

Martha 07:43
You’re like I would have decided something differently…

Michele Friedner 07:44
Yeah, I would have decided something different. Yeah, but and so what happened was I wound up going to Oxford University for a year because for study abroad program, Oxford University is based on the tutorial system and you basically have the very individualized tutorials with you and an instructor and you're reading text and talking about them and writing essays each week. So, it was the kind of situation where accommodations would not be needed for me because it would be one on one and so we decided that I would do that. 

And so when I went to Oxford, I continued to study things related to India as well. And that was also my first experience, you know, working with postdocs and lecturers in this one on one way. And I was like, oh, this is an interesting potential career path. You know, this could be something that would be really exciting and stimulating and fun.

But I don't think I seriously thought about becoming a professor at that time. I think I just really enjoyed working 

Martha 08:56
 …like, I like the world that I'm in. Yeah. And what were you specifically studying in those one on one experiences?

Michele Friedner 09:04
So I did a course on Islamic jurisprudence, which was, I think, the best class for me that I did. And then I did a class on oral traditions, and I did a class on, I think it was on Indian religion, and I did one on Judaic studies, and there were these really wonderfully tailored classes where I would go in, I would meet with the lecturer and we would talk about, you know, what would be interesting things to read.

And then I would go to the library and read them. And then I would write an essay and then I would go and talk to them about my essay and talk to them about the reading. And then I would go and do it again.

Martha 09:44
I mean, that sounds pretty wonderful. Like…

Michele Friedner 09:48
It was…

Martha 09:49
Pretty stimulating and I mean, I'm a big, I'm a big school nerd anyway. So I'm like, that sounds wonderful to me, but so you were there for one semester or a year? 

Michele Friedner 10:00
I was there for a year and I will say that academically, it was really wonderful and stimulating, but socially, I have a super hard time because Oxford, I think, is a very elite place and there's a strong sense of exceptionalism about herself, and it's also a place. and I think it's socially pretty hard to break into like, they're eating garb, well, they're not eating carbs, but there are, you know, you would have to wear a gown to go to meals in the dining hall and people would go to the pub together. And so, yeah, so it's just kind of a weird place for me socially. 

And so, but so stimulating academically, but socially weird and awkward. 

Martha 10:45
You know, thinking with an eye towards anyone who might be listening to this episode, how did you sort of internally work through that challenge of feeling stimulated in one way, but pretty isolated or, you know, challenged in a different way? How did you move through that moment?

Michele Friedner 11:02
Well, I tried to leave whenever I could, so on the week, so on the weekends, I would go to London or travel elsewhere, and then I think I would just devote myself to my work, and I spent countless hours in the library, and really just gocus on that.

Martha 11:22
Yeah, and then so then you did you come back to Brown for your senior year after that?

Michele Friedner 11:27
I came back to Brown for my senior year, and then after I graduated from Brown, I taught for one year at a private independent school for kids with, at that time, they were called diverse learners or kids with different learning styles. 

So it was a small independent school for kids who did not fit into sort of traditional or normative public schools or private schools.

So it's a super small school and I did that for one year. And then after that I went and I worked for a law firm. So I thought, okay, fine, I will try it out. I will

Martha 12:03
Here you go, Dad. This one's for you. 

Michele Friedner 12:05
Yeah. Yeah. So I did that, and I worked mostly on deaf access and related issues. I was looking for, it was a national nonprofit law firm that focused on doing mostly large scale class action lawsuits on behalf of disabled people.

And I looked at a lot of cases involving deaf access violations and discrimination against deaf people. And then during that time, I was like, okay, I'm going to save my money and I'm going to finally get to go to India. 

And so I saved, I, so I, yeah, so I saved my money and then I planned to go to India. And then what I did was I planned to visit different disability and deaf organizations in India. So when I landed, and I should note that I traveled with my then, person I was dating, and now partner, we started off at the Ali Yavar Jung National Institute for the Hearing Handicapped in Mumbai. So that was the first place that we went.

And when we were there, we met the Sibaji Panda, who was one of the leaders of India's Deaf rights movement, and he has been really instrumental in starting Indian Sign Language curricula and influencing and advocating for the spread of Indian Sign Language teaching around the country. So we started out there, and then we went to visit 

Martha 13:40
Seems like India had been calling you for so long. What was it like to finally arrive in Mumbai?

Michele Friedner 13:48
Well, it was great. Overwhelming when we first got there, because I have our journey to the Ali Yavar Jung National Institute is located in the middle of a pretty large slum area in Bandra, it's very densely populated. So, when we first got there, I think we were sort of reeling from the heat and from the chaos, but we were also really grateful to have been warmly welcomed onto the relatively calm residential campus.

And I didn't know at that time that that would be a place that I would go back to again in the future. So that was interesting. And we were taken care of so lovingly by the people that we met who showed us around, who took us to meals, who took us to see sites, and so on.

Martha 14:37
Yeah, so yeah, so how does this trip, is this trip, sounds like it's pretty instrumental in sort of bringing together these things you've been doing, right? The religious aspect, the India aspect, and now you're working sort of more specifically in the field of deaf rights and disability rights. How does this start to coalesce into a career path?

Michele Friedner 14:58
Well, I think I spent lots of time while I was in India being very curious about the ways that discourses, what people were saying around deaf rights and the importance of Indian sign language and the importance of advocacy, they seem very similar to what I had heard in the US when I was looking in legal spaces and participating in deaf and disability advocacy in the US.

And so after this trip, which was pretty short, it was a little bit over two months, I thought, you know what, I really want to study this further. And I was trying to think about how I might be able to do that. And I had originally thought that I might want to study public health. But then I talked with Sue Schweik, who was at that time an English professor t UC Berkeley and she said, you know what, what you're describing sounds like medical anthropology and you should really look at Berkeley's medical anthropology program. We have amazing scholars like Lawrence Cohen and Nancy Scheper-Hughes. 

And so I started to read Lawrence's book, which was about aging in India and ideas of what it means to age well and what it means to age both biomedically and within a family. And, you know, just like, how do we think about aging more broadly? And I thought, wow, this is an amazing book. And this is very similar to what I want to do in terms of thinking about deafness and disability in India. And since I was in the Bay area, it was really easy to contact Lawrence and Nancy and other people at Berkeley.

And so what I did, which is probably good advice for people thinking about grad school, was I actually just went to their offices and signed up for office hours and stood outside their offices and waited patiently until they had a moment and then I introduced myself and told them about my research interest.

And then I applied to grad school and thankfully and luckily, I got into Berkeley, and I chose to go there and focus on again, medical anthropology, but relation to disability and deafness.

Martha 17:19
And for those of us who may or are not in the field, could you just give us a definition of medical anthropology as a field? 

Michele Friedner 17:28
So traditionally, medical anthropology was how to look at medicine as a cultural system. So, when we think about doctors wearing their white coats and following, you know, certain spoken and unspoken rules of the field, medical anthropologists look at that critically and study it just as they would study other cultures or communities or world.

However, more recently, medical anthropologists have looks beyond the clinic to looking at other spaces that could be considered medicalized spaces or not medicalized spaces. And we have looked at the hegemony of vital medicine. We've looked at the ways that people lived experiences of illness, have been valued and devalued and we've looked at questions of power and development in medicine and beyond.

And I will say that I will say really quickly that, you know, medical anthropology might seem a problematic space to do work on disability because of disabled people's thought relationship with medicine, but I've always found it a really inspiring and important space to do work on disability because medical discourses here are so prevalent in how we think about disability.

Martha 18:50
Yeah, and I mean, you know, you speak with such clarity and also such passion about this, you know, what and we'll, we'll eventually get to how this leads you to University of Chicago, but I would love to hear, if you were trying to explain to someone in, you know, five minutes, why you are passionate about this field and why it is important and what we, what you want us to know the people who will not be in this field professionally, what is your mission statement? What do you want? What change do you wish to affect in the world?

Michele Friedner 19:21
So I think, you know, again, as somebody who works at the intersection of disability studies and medical anthropology, I think something that I'm really passionate about is the fact that medicine's perspectives or doctors perspectives of the experiences of disabled people are heavily deficit based. And we have studies that show that disabled people routinely value their lives and rate their quality of life higher than doctors do. I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. 

And I think, you know, for me and my work, I always try to take a strength based perspective to thinking about disability. And I look at disabled people as experts and how they move through the world and how they utilize disability expertise in worlds that are not designed for them. So I think in my work, I always try to throw down disabled people's perspective and to show the important and often courageous works that they do to create inhabitable worlds and that they're often doing this despite medicine. 

You know, and despite educational infrastructures and systems that don't exist to make things easy for them.

So I think that's what I would say. And I would also say, of course, there are doctors that are amazing when it comes to disability. I was just in India snd I was talking with an orthopedic surgeon, as well as his patient. And he was really incredible in terms of how he thought about disability holistically, in terms of how he was an advocate for his patients, and in terms of how he works really hard to work not only with the individual patient, but to think about systemic issues in medicine and in society. And so I really valued that. And I think that that's super important for the doctors and other medical practitioners to do that. 

They need to think beyond the individual patient and to think about the able structure that surround the institutions and the world in general, in which we wrote.

Martha 21:41
Yeah, I am over here just like vociferously nodding my head with everything you say, but that was also beautifully, beautifully put. So how does all of this as it's all coalescing you finish up at your graduate education. How does this lead you to walk in the doors eventually of University of Chicago as a professor?

Michele Friedner 22:04
So after I graduated from Berkeley, I had a postdoc at MIT for three years, and I was in the anthropology program there, where I had incredible mentors who really supported me and finishing my first book, which was on the experiences of sign language, using sign language speaking adults, and mostly in Bangalore and South India.

So I had that postdoc for three years, and then I went and I got a job. I was lucky. By the way, I applied for hundreds of jobs. Like I did, it is not easy to get as an academic 

Martha 22:41
Which is important, important to note for the listeners of this podcast.

Michele Friedner 22:44
Yeah, I think it's super important to know. And I should say that when I started my PhD, I had no idea that the job market was going to be what it is. You know, I had no idea and I wasn't even thinking and, you know, now I look at my students, my undergraduate students at UChicago and I do have students who say, oh, I'm going to be a professor when I graduate and I'm going to, I'm going to finish my BA and then I'm going to do a PhD and then I'm going to become a professor. And I listen to these students who are relatively confident about this and I really don't understand it because it is such a, you know, difficult, difficult path.

And there are so few jobs and I think the structure of higher education is changing. And so I count myself as being incredibly lucky.

So I, after I finished my postdoc, I got a job at Stony Brook University, which is a SUNY in New York, and a State University of New York, and I was teaching and I thought it was a new PhD program in rehabilitation sciences, and there was a disability studies track in that program.

And so I was teaching in that program and I had wonderful colleagues and mentors and students. However, I had always heard about this program. The Department of Comparative Human Development, this department, and I had applied for a job here when I was finishing up my postdoc and I think I made it to the 1st round of elimination, so I applied and then they what they do is when you apply and then they maybe weed out, you know, hundreds of applications and then they ask people for letters of recommendation. 

And so I got to that stage. I submitted my letters of recommendation and then it never progressed further. But, you know, this department was always in the back of my mind as my dream department. And so I was teaching in New York at Stony Brook when a job in this department opened. And so I thought, you know what, even though we love living in New York, and even though it's great to be at a State University like Stony Brook, and even though it's great to be working with these students, I would really love this job.

And so I applied for this job and then I got an, I would ask for money, and then I was invited for an interview, and then I came out for an interview, and I gave a job talk, which is, for those of you who don't know, when you are doing the academic job market thing, so you are invited for a campus visit, which is essentially a series of interviews and a job talk.

And these things are scheduled back to back over two to three days, and it's an incredibly gruelling process. Well, you're just constantly meetings and then you have your job talk and then you get grilled by different directors, and then you have dinners. And so it's a really arduous and gruelling process. 

But anyway, so I went through that. and then it took a really, really long time to find out that I had been hired because there were budget cuts. And then it seems like it was unclear whether they were going to get to hire for the position or not.

And then I finally got the offer. But it came really late in the academic year and so, at that point, it made more sense to stay at Stony Brook for another year out of courtesy to my department and just in terms of my family. And so, I stayed in New York for another year, and then they moved to Chicago to join the department.

Martha 26:17
 And when was that? How long have you been there? Have you, how long have you been at U of Chicago?

Michele Friedner26:21
 So, this is my second year. I got tenure two years ago. When I joined, I joined as a second a second tier, sorry, my second term, sorry, second term assistant professor. And then I had, I think, five years to get tenure. And so during that time, I wrote a second book, and I published a bunch of articles, and I got a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Martha 26:48
Nice. And What is it like being in, you know, you mentioned that the uniqueness of this department, what is it like being in a department that is so and interdisciplinary?

Michele Friedner 26:59
I love it so much. So I have colleagues who are developmental psychologists who I will go to and ask questions about language development in small children. I have colleagues who are behavioral biologists who are asked about animal communication. I have linguistic colleagues who work at the intersection of language and sorry, at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and other forms of anthropology. Oh, I shouldn't say that. But at the intersections of linguistic anthropology and more general anthropology, who I will ask linguistic anthropology questions. 

And it's a very collegial department. I think people really pride themselves on their commitment to being in this interdisciplinary space and they pride themselves on being able to consult with colleagues and as well as to ask questions that go beyond individual disciplines.

 I'm so happy to be in this space where I don't feel confined to anthropology and I feel like I'm challenged to think more broadly and also to write in ways that are more accessible to scholarly and lay communities. So, I love it.

Martha 28:15
Beautiful. I mean, it sounds like it sounds awesome. 

Michele Friedner 28:21
It really is. It really, really is. 

Martha 28:23
It really, does sound that way. So as we, as we start to close I would love to know two things. One this is sort of the, you know, this is the time travel question. If you could go back, you know, thinking about you know, when you describe that first year of undergrad and you're expanding your worldview, you know, if you could go back and talk to that version of yourself, what would you like her to know about this moment in your life and where your path has taken you?

And what are you looking forward to in your own career as a professor and in the field moving forward?

Michele Friedner 29:01
So, I think what I would like my earlier me to know is that it's possible to become an academic and not becoming an academic, is a career path that is an option, even though it is stressful and hard, especially in the beginning when you're not sure you're going to be able to get a job. So, actually, that's, doesn't sound like a very good statement, from a very encouraging statement to my earlier self. 

Martha 29:32
I think it is both encouraging and realistic, right? Like, this is a possibility and have no illusions that it is, you know,

Michele Friedner 29:40
Right. Right. Right. And I think I would tell my earlier self to. Continue to take classes that are exciting and interesting to you because, you know, liberal arts education is incredible in that way. You have you have opportunities to study a wide range of things and you don't know what will sit with you.

Like, I feel I recently. I emailed a Russian lit professor that I had. I think I think I took her class in my first year of undergrad and it was such an incredible class. Like I still think about the Tolstoy novels that we’ve read, you know, and so I think I would validate that younger me that was interested in taking a lot of different kinds of classes.

And I think I would also tell my younger me that you should take advantage of the possibility or the option of doing a research project as an undergrad. That's one thing that I see undergrads doing a lot at Chicago, an independent and mentored research. And I think that that would have been something that I would have loved doing as an undergrad, but I didn't. So I think independent and mentored research would be something to definitely consider doing as an undergrad student.

Martha 30:57
Beautiful. And finally yeah, what's, what's next when you look forward in your own career path or the field itself? What are the things that are exciting right now?

Michele Friedner 31:11
 Well, I really enjoy teaching and working with our students. So I'm looking forward to continuing to teach disability anthropology and a teacher class on disability and design to students. And, you know, it's interesting. We had this incredible quote. Actually, we didn't have it. But I think there was like a survey done on our department's courses at one point.

And one of the students who took my disability and design class said, you know, taking this class is like study abroad because we learn a brand new way of thinking about the world, like thinking through disability expertise and thinking through questions of access has given me a totally different way of seeing the world.

So, you know, I really love teaching that class and I teach it with Jennifer Iverson, who is a music theorist. And so it's really fun to teach with somebody who is very different from me in terms of discipline and I love co-teaching with her, and so I'd like to continue to do that. And I think I like to continue to think about the role of disability in higher education, specifically as disability intersects with issues of diversity, equity and inclusion and making sure that disability is seen as a DEI issue.

And then in terms of my research, you know, I'm looking forward to continuing to conduct research in India and, and elsewhere in the world on issues of disability. I've been recently working on cochlear implantation and the ways that cochlear implantation has been changing how we see deafness, societally and medically, and so I'm looking forward to continuing to work on that.

Oh, and then one thing is, I don't know if you did also wanna mention this, but so neither of my parents are professors, right? And I don't have family members at all who are academics. And so I wonder if that would be useful for listeners to hear too, because I think so often it's and intergenerational thing but there are lots of us out there who do not have academic families.

Martha 33:53
Thank you, Professor Friedner, for your time today. And Course Takers, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like and share it with your friends and family. You can learn more about the University of Chicago at uchicago.edu or the University’s campus in Hong Kong at uchicago.hk. Stay tuned for more and thanks for listening.