Nhc Podcasts

For years, public discourse and policy debates about people with disabilities have focused on the rights of those with medically recognized impairments. Increasingly, however, scholars in the field of disability studies, including Fellow Nancy J. Hirschmann, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, are reshaping the way we see our bodies, the range of freedoms we enjoy, and the limitations we experience. In this podcast, Hirschmann helps us to begin to make sense of the complex relationship between freedom and disability. She speaks with NHC Vice President for Scholarly Programs Tania Munz about her latest book project, Freedom, Power, and Disability, which builds on her previous scholarship on the intersections of politics, gender, and philosophy. As Hirschmann notes, thinkers for centuries framed disability as a problem or disorder to be overcome or cured—a phenomenon now known as the “medical model.” Beginning in the 1960s, however, disability scholars began to offer a new “socia