Longmore at Smith-Kettlewell

The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco is delighted to host a lecture by Professor Paul K. Longmore on Thursday, July 8th at noon.
Professor Longmore will be discussing the history of American blind politics in the 20th century in a talk entitled "Subverting the Dominant Paradigm of Blindness: Revolutions in Consciousness."

The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute has long been a leader in rehabilitation engineering research for issues related to blindness and low vision. Our Thursday colloquium series routinely offers presentations by eminent researchers on scientific topics related to vision rehabilitation, medical treatment of visual pathology, and the neuroscience and psychophysics of normal vision.

Professor Longmore is a major figure in the growing academic discipline of disability studies -- an area that, among other things, examines the impact of cultural, political, and historical factors on the place and perception of people with disabilities in society.   

This talk is the first in a series of Smith-Kettlewell colloquia intended to bring together the fields of disability studies and rehabilitation engineering research -- a combination whose time should long since have come. Rehabilitation engineering and vision research stand to be significantly strengthened through the infusion of rich academic discourse taking place in disability studies. By the same token, disability studies has too long been the exclusive province of social scientists and historians, yet there is an unrealized and important place for neuroscientists and rehabilitation engineers at the disability studies table.

With Professor Paul Longmore as the first speaker in our "Disability Studies Meets Rehabilitation Engineering," series, Smith-Kettlewell is proud once again to lead the way forward. We hope you can join us.