 Good morning. This is Christopher Donahue speaking. I'm honored to introduce Professor Jaypreet Virdi. Professor Virdi is an award-winning historian whose research focuses on the ways medicine and technology impact the lived experiences of disabled people. Her first book, Hearing Happiness, Deaf Cures in History, raises pivotal questions about deafness in American society, and the endless or seemingly endless quest for a cure. She has published articles on diagnostic technologies, audio audio metric, hearing aids, and the medicalization of deafness, and has published essays in the Atlantic, Slate Future Tents, and The New Internationalist, as well as The Washington Post. Professor Virdi has taught at Ryerson University, the University of Toronto, and Brock University. She is currently an associate professor at the Department of History at the University of Delaware, where she teaches courses on disability histories, the history of medicine, and health activism. She also currently serves as the co-director of the Haigley program in the history of capitalism, technology, and culture. She is currently working on multiple projects. Her second book, Medicalizing Deafness, Oral Surgery in 19th Century Britain, traces the efforts of British artists or ear specialists examining how their attempts to define a professional identity influenced educational, progressive, and eugenicist programs to eradicate deafness. You can follow her at Jai Virdi on Twitter. Professor Virdi's talk will be about 40 minutes long, and will be followed by about a 15-minute question and answer session. Thank you again, Professor Virdi, and we look forward to your keynote, and to the discussion afterwards. Now over to you, Professor Virdi. Good morning. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and I'm very pleased to deliver this keynote and want to thank Dr. Dunhu for the invitation and introduction, and also to the interpreters and captionists for their work today. We'll begin by sharing my screen. On the screen is the title slide for my talk, titled Measuring the Science of Hereditary Deafness, and behind the text, there is an illustration of a Mendelian chart showing a deaf and hearing family. The topic of this symposium on disability and genomics asks us to think deeply about the entangled roots of ableism within science and medicine, both historically and in our present day clinical encounters. The topic I find also prompts us to consider questions about authority. Who's authority matters within healthcare, whether in the laboratory, in clinical space, and how does authority shape or is shaped by accountants of ableism? These are questions that I'm addressing in my current project, provisionally titled Medicalizing Deafness. I will be sharing aspects of this project today, namely on how increasing statistical studies on deafness and ear diseases in the 19th century presented worrying data about hereditary deafness, thus sparking greater medical and state intervention at the site of these concerns than schools. The slide says introduction and crisis of care. There is a beige graphic on the right. To contextualize this history, I want to begin by briefly sharing an ending quote about a crisis of care or the challenges of what historians refer to as the silence of the archive, or more specifically the difficulties of encountering deaf and disabled perspectives in the archives that are not presented through an auditory standpoint. By the historian of medicine, science, and technology, my approach to writing deaf history tends to be filtered through the perception of those who are engaging with medical care and knowledge, namely the practitioners who specialize in deafness and ear diseases in the 19th century who refer to themselves as auras or all-surgery and by the end of the 19th century as autologists. While they predominantly approach deaf people as subjects for developing theories on disease causation and hearing loss, some of these practitioners additionally consider access to language and education as essential as medical care for a deaf person's overall well-being. As a result, the extent of the reach being on the clinical space excludes of the deaf. Centering disability history, however, my research also considers how deaf people and the concept of deafness, both in their suppression and active resistance to intervention, had shaped the ways all surgeons thought about their roles as medical experts within the various institutional roles that they crafted for themselves. There is now a graphic on the right. It is an illustration of a 19th century institution surrounded by trees. The text below the script says, Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Beginning in 2009, when I first embarked on this project as part of my doctoral dissertation, I was focusing on the institutional and medical history of the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Initially founded in 1792 at the Asylum for the Support and Education of the Deaf and Dumb Children of the Poor, this was the first public school providing education and training to deaf children in the United Kingdom, eventually expanding and relocating several times before being settled in the 20th century at the Royal School for Deaf Children in Margaret Kent. Correspondents with the administration at the school revealed that there were archival materials available for researchers like myself. Some of which dated to the school's founding in 1792. I was certainly overjoyed, but repeated requests to access these materials went unacknowledged if not completely rejected. After reaching out to members of the British Deaf History Society who had previously accessed the material and helped in its organization, I learned that the materials at the school were not maintained in any fashion adhering to archival standards. Boxes were essentially dumped in a trailer, some of which accounted serious water damage. I spent the next five years requesting to view the material, and not even a letter of introduction from the President of the British Deaf History Society would grant me access. So reluctantly, I moved on from this project. On the screen, there is now an article titled, UK's oldest deaf school closes amid concern children are being let down. Below, there is a photo of a classroom and a teacher is assisting two children who are at work. The children are wearing cochlear implants. Meanwhile, in 2016, after 224 years of service, the Royal School permanently closed when the John Townsend Trust went into administration after decades of neglect and mismanagement in following reports of a long-standing history of physical abuse against their pupils. Some records had laid as 2014 testify that multiple pupils reported staff marking them for being unable to hear and even physically restraining them to ensure that these children avoid a sign-in. The archive was initially lost, but then recovered and now maintained by the Kent County Council. While I have to be able to restart my research, the unfortunate closing of the Royal School captures broader cultural shifts about the place of deaf people within British society and the legacy of medical intervention within educational spaces. Deafness is classified as the second most common disability in the United Kingdom, with approximately 11 million people diagnosed with hearing loss, 900 down term of whom are severely or profoundly deaf and communicate largely with British sign language. Yet deaf people report significant barriers to education, employment and access to health services. At least 40% of deaf people and even more who are signers report mental health issues brought on by barriers in structural and welfare services and their struggle with accessing proper healthcare. One study revealed that 77% of deaf people with primary language and British sign language have difficulty communicating with the doctor and at least 30% avoid the doctor altogether out of fear of frustration. Not even the passing of the Quality Act in 2010, which limits disability as one of the nine protected characteristics against discrimination, has reduced misconception and assumption about deaf people and the problem of accessing health services, including addressing the discrimination encountered through communication difficulties. On the screen is an illustration of a male physician examining a child's ear. The child is held by his mother. Below is the text title of medicalizing deafness or surgery in 19th century Britain and some reports for what is being spoken. In my book manuscript, I argue the use of the crisis of communication and care can be traced to arguments by 19th century British or Surgeon who claim that education and medicine would produce self-sufficient deaf citizens who otherwise be lost to perpetual silence. Their perspective helped delve fast through the start of the 20th century when nativists and eugenics concerned about the cost of treating and caring for degenerate or deficient people significantly trade discourses about education, typing out what historian Mark Jackson defined as the medical pedagogical approach. All surgeons secure their authority by extending their role outside of the clinic and more crucially by offering intellectual respectability for translating statistical data into structural policy. They might talk then just on their very broad history but focusing on one specific concern and that is how increasing worries about hereditary deafness in the late 19th century began to be shaped by statistics and eugenics therefore transforming the tenets of deaf education. As we shall see concerns about hereditary deafness whereby no human standard nor universally agreed upon but the alarmist rhetoric was powerful and worrying thus shaping the lives of deaf people for generations to come. The text on the screen says statistical authority. The professional expansion of oral surgery and the authority of artists occurred within the broader context of Victorian optimism about the application of scientific medicine to solve a range of social problems. The optimism appeared self-evident in a society rightful with perceptions of imperialism and applied scientists and in which expectations of progress required new and promising scientific strategy for understanding the social calculus. In other words, social problems became issues for statistical analysis. Of course, while discourses on the applications of statistical for moral and social reform were by no means homogeneous, numbers, graphs and formulas possessed immense rhetorical power especially when enhanced by bureaucratic management. On the screen is a table of different diseases of the ear that are treated and recorded at St. Mark's Hospital in Dublin. Most surgeons have non-compiled narrative case studies of the patrons and maintain records within hospital annual reports. The data lengths the port for how they assess the prevalence of deaf population and how they interpreted and categorized ear diseases, especially hereditary deaf music, which they found very difficult to treat, let alone cure. British educators of the deaf as well maintain records of their pupil's health status, including detail about probable or actual process of deafness, the race of hereditary deafness, and the presence of deaf news people in a given population. Congenital deaf news people with generations of hereditary deafness, especially through deaf intermarriage, which is marriage between deaf person, fell at the center of these eugenics debates. Hortologists and oralists alike reached several questions. Was hereditary deaf music a single variation easily transmitted through deaf families who intermarried? Was collegial deafness a hereditary trait? Was marriage between hereditary deaf and hearing partner further spreading deafness and therefore polluting, quote, the national stock? The text is statistical authority. There is a beige graphic on the right where text overlays summarizing the points that are being spoken. It is at the juncture that hereditary deafness became a pressing issue as notions of prevention and medical surveillance became intertwined with eugenics ideology. Largely perceived as an ideology of the professional middle class, but also attracting attention from scientists, policymakers, and social reformers from across the political spectrum. Eugenics was held at the solution to the problems of the British society, urbanization, disease, properism, more degradation, and it also functioned as a tool for augmenting class, gender, and race-based division. Eugenics offered intellectual respectability because it allowed Prakantrina to translate scientific data about heredity into structure policy, especially to grow broader evolutionary debates about human nature and to reduce the cost of treating and caring for, quote, degenerate population. While evidential findings of degeneration tended to be anti-codal rather than statistical, fears of degeneration nevertheless influenced public health policy and legislated reform. There is now a table showing a selection of large families with generational deafness and the propensity of generation in which a deaf child was produced. Between 1890 and 1930, eugenics's policies began to take root across deaf institutions. All of them, the pedagogy of speech rather than sign, was presented as a way to give teachers the responsibility and ability to instill spoken language in deaf people, returning them to hearing society and thus human evolution. Indeed, as one medical practitioner asserted, the issue of teaching deaf children speech was, quote, so largely a social and eugenic one. Eugenics then was presented as a method for providing deaf children with respectability, literacy, and mannerism as manifested for social mobility, especially when supported by state provision. Education was precision at this site where different experts could need to apply eugenics's idea for tackling concerns of deaf inherent, a point stressed by one instructor, quote. Education is the only remedy that can in any way mitigate the ills which mankind are liable to transmit to their dissenters. The code is also up on the screen. This eugenic impulse to stratify deaf children to question the paredity was thereby part of a larger process of normalizing and standardizing deaf education and try to progress the goal of health and prevention. That is, the ultimate goal was to reduce if not eliminate the ricks of hereditary deaf music, quote, spreading on track through the population. While British artists were entangled with issues of deaf education throughout the 19th century, the level of their engagement began to steadily increase in the 1880s as they faced greater responsibility for protecting the health and welfare of deaf school children, including through early prevention programs to help progress the deafness. On the screen are text summarizing the key events which I will be speaking. Double key events occurred in the late 19th century that would drastically transform our role in deaf education. First was the second international congress on the education of the deaf that took place in Milan in September 1880. A multi-day, a multinational event drawing 164 educators, physicians, and laypersons, which was also dominated by Italy and France, bringing a combined 143 delegates. The discussion at this congress exclusively focused on the issue of methods of instruction for educating deaf children. Only one deaf delegate attended as the convention was mainly managed by promoters of oralism. At the end, the convention passed age resolution declaring, quote, the uncontemptable superiority of speech over sign in restoring the deaf new to society and giving him a more perfect knowledge of language. The delegates proclaimed that the oral method are to be the preferred, sorry, the oral method are to be preferred to that of sign for the education and instruction of deaf children. Final means, however, was the resolution universal nor did it completely eradicate sign language. In fact, many British school continued with the combined system of speech and sign well into the 20th century. The second key event were the results of several surveys undertaken by headmasters at deaf school as well as charitable society to assess the social problem of deafness and blindness with the aim of formulating social policies. The surveys provided essential data for presuming state action, especially when it coupled with an 1861 census, which revealed the inadequacy of educational fertility for blind and deaf children. Third, was the Royal Commission to consider the extension of the 18th Assembly Education Act, which established compulsory schooling for children ages 5 to 12, but did not include special provision for blind, deaf, epileptic, or physically disabled children, therefore allowing many school boards to refuse to include them with compulsory education. The resulting report from the commission led to the elementary education, Blind and Deaf Act, being passed in 1893 to provide every blind, deaf, and disabled child the right to education paid by local rates and parliamentary grants. By 1907, the costs were covered entirely by taxpayers. Now, such state and bureaucratic control also began to give greater authority to all practitioners, aims that guidelines for the education department to incorporate extensive medical policies and to assess and, where possible, even treat disabled children. It meant that deafness was also formally classified as a medical condition requiring certification from a medical practitioner. Yet, the issue of hereditary deaf music system appeared resistant to this effort, and as I'll show next, involved greater alliances between educators and artists to address the worrying potential of what became known as a deaf variety. The slide says, tracking intermarriage. One concern raised by the Royal Commission was the issue of hereditary deaf music system that arise from intermarriage and contentious marriages, or marriages between cousins, as outlined by the Centers and Decisive Studies of Deaf Family. They especially placed stock on the increasing hereditary transmission of deaf music as being evident for the importance of oralism, teaching through speech. In other words, the concern was if deaf new children with hereditary deafness were left to their own geysers at predominantly signing school, then they were more likely to form a community of like-minded signers who were unwilling, if not incapable, to assimilate to the broader hearing society. The situation in the United States was especially revealing for comparison, as outlined in the Royal Commission report, and the quote is also on the screen. Quote, it is said that before education was imparted to deaf youth and before they were congregated in various educational institutions, hardly any intermarriage. In Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, where oralism dominated, the incidence of deaf intermarriage was much lower than in the United States or England. Also, educators at deaf institutions had previously tabulated the incidence of deaf intermarriage. The proliferation of eugenics raised additional fears about heredity, reproduction, and degeneracy. Tabulating data on the existence of large families of deaf youth or tracing how deafness runs in the family were maintained by individuals in deaf school who tracked the incidence of hereditary deafness. The London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb for instance, published in 1859, a list of 23 poor and working-class families. Of the 160 children amongst these families, 105 were deaf. The screen shows a photograph of Alexander Graham Bell's memoir. Next to the photo is a text pane, a deaf priority, and summarizing the details I will be seeking. To read through this very statistic on hereditary deaf music, the Royal Commissioner principally drew testimony from Alexander Graham Bell. Earlier in 1883, at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Bell raised the issue of the fact that in this country deaf youth marry deaf youth. His resulting publication memoir, upon the formulation of a deaf variety of the human race, which combined empirical data from American residential schools for the deaf with statistics and probability, willingly concluded that a deaf variety was becoming increasingly possible and there was no sign of this trend slowing down. Bell's alarmist perspective thereby advocated for eugenics control through all of them by restricting this segregation of deaf people and encouraging them to socialize in hearing communities. Any form of restriction or legal ban on deaf intermarriage he added would merely promote immoral behavior and possibly even increase rates of hereditary deafness. But preventive measures were recommended and most likely to succeed. Prevention was especially successful when disguised as education reform. Eliminate residential school, forbid sign language use in the classroom, and prohibit deaf adults from becoming teachers for deaf children. These reforms would encourage deaf people to focus on developing the oral skill and make them figuratively less deaf. And these perspectives led Bell's memoir to becoming an often cited source on deaf history. But it also drew the wrath of deaf people who considered Bell's eugenics view as damning to their community. Bell's view was summarized and repeated in newspapers, magazines, and speeches worldwide. Considered cutting-edge research at the time, his memoir drew inspiration from Francis Goldstein's statistical impairmentism and viewed deaf people as an ideal example to study how continuous selection influenced evolution. While this scientific stand was not new to those who work with deaf people, Bell's reputation drew wider public attention to the topic of hereditary deafness, especially his worrying statistic that 95% of deaf people can intermarry other deaf people. The commissioners professed that Bell's studies and supporting research was quote, sufficient evidence to prove that there was a real danger of an increase of conditional deafness. And they recommended that intermarriages of conditional deaf youth should be strongly discouraged. Now, this resolution also demonstrates how the issue of deaf intermediary reflected changing ideals about expectation for deaf people to assimilate into society and the cost that taxpayers and state aid would require to cover. So, for example, one pamphlet showed from the London County Council demonstrated the comparative cost. On the screen, we can see this comparison. A normal child, the cost of education, would be a little over five pounds. A deaf child, 31 pounds. A child declared mentally deficient seven pounds. And one who is physically deficient, 11 pounds. Now, the deaf child certainly cost the most. Further reports from the London County Council indicated that the cost of educating a deaf new child amounted to approximately 31 pounds per year, compared to five pounds spent on a normal trial. If the numbers of deaf children continue to increase, especially hereditary deafness, trapped through deaf intermarriage, then as one Eugenics textbook asserted, quote, deaf muti-some is therefore a very expensive conditon for any community to entertain. Even if the children weren't educated, were able to support themselves. Not all experts agree that the threat of hereditary deaf muti-some was as deeply concerning as all it came to be. Arthur Henry Bader, the Secretary of the Royal Association in Aid of the Deaf and Down, and one of the two deaf signers who were invited to testify for the Royal Commission. Strongly opposed Alexander Graham Bell's finding and prescription, I did American Educator, Edward Manuel Gallaudet. Moreover, while Bell tied the prevention of deaf intermarriage to the health of the nature, the assistance provided by deaf people, skeptical educators, and missionaries questioned Bell's evidence and showed that deaf intermarriage only infrequently led to deaf mute offspring. The text on the screen says prevention and control. Meanwhile, for autologists, the discourse offered ample opportunity to illustrate the importance of their fear for guiding social and educational policies to advise on the issue of deaf or hereditary deafness. The text on the screen says, autologists walled in deaf education and is summarizing the points and in speaking. Autologists walled became more profound after the 1893 Elementary Education Act and its later provision, which compelled school boards to provide for blind, deaf, epileptic, and disabled children. Now medical experts control the selection process, examining and certifying children who were referred to special schools or classes, thereby precisioning medical surveillance as a coarsely ingenious approach for managing disability and state-funded provisions for education. Autologists assessed children hearing, diagnosed their deafness, and where possible recommended surgical intervention to correct hearing defects before a child could be admitted to school. And they especially loved the symptoms of hereditary deaf muteism to discontinuous intermarriage. Many autologists agree that early recognition, prevention, and treatment of all afflictions were essential for identifying causes of deafness for intervention. Some, however, took more extreme views when it came to hereditary deafness. One of the most outspoken autologists on the issue of preventing hereditary deafness was First of All McLeod Newsley. In his role as the first senior all-soldier and medical inspector in the London County Council School, McLeod Newsley had ample opportunity to judge the working system of deaf education. And he opinionated that, quote, the whole system of deaf education in this country needs to reorganize nature. On the screen is a table of the London County Council School classification system for deafness as outlined by First of All McLeod Newsley, corresponding with the educational treatment required. Newsley's views were concerning because the 1893 Elementary Education Act fixed the starting age for deaf school children at seven years of age. In contrast to an ordinary trial being set at five, then he believed that this curtailed any opportunities for early medical intervention and proper assessment of a child's hearing and mental abilities. The results then McLeod Newsley argued, meant that too many deaf children were being placed in deaf school when they could otherwise benefit from oral classes to obtain speech and make use of the residual hearing. Even though the causative factors of required and conditional deafness were recognized and understood by a college, McLeod Newsley argued that too much emphasis was being placed on peer and not enough on prevention. As he elaborated, for many cases of deafness, a cure would usually help us. Under McLeod Newsley's system, all children in the London County Council school at London County Council School have been hearing preliminary examining during the first year by a school doctor or nurse under his supervision. All children who are preliminary diagnosed or suspected of deafness were then recommended to a local autologist. Upon assessment, a child would be classified into three primary groups. The very deaf, the semi deaf, and the slightly deaf, which was later further divided into hard of hearing, and then adequately recommended for treatment. Under McLeod Newsley's method, the dual process of what he called efficient education and efficient treatment would detect a considerable number of cases of early deafness and could therefore, according to him, diminish the cases of acquired deafness and those of deaf children who need special education. By no means was McLeod Newsley disministering the value of special education. After all, he was very clear on his position on oral sound. I have quoted on the slide. Hearing is the most important educational sense because it handles through which the child obtained the speech and language which he cannot think and do them clearly. McLeod Newsley claimed that the medical failure to properly assess deaf and deaf new children's physiological and psychological abilities for language and speech also led to increased unnecessary costs. Recent statistics show that the cost of education per head of the deaf news in the London County Council School is 31 pounds per onion. This includes both residential and day scholars. If we deduct the former, the cost is 23 pounds. The expense of educating the normal child in the elementary school is 5 pounds so that we obtain no less than 18 pounds per onion extra for the education of one section of a defective children. This is an appeal to the pocket which should have some effect upon the repair. Deaf education, he argued, could only be improved to different aspects, medical, hygienic, physiological, social, hygienic, and financial. He argued that the present system could be remodeled otherwise the system of deaf education would be a complete failure because too many children were not obtaining the benefit of speech. McLeod Newsley's research of deaf children at London County School further indicated that too many children were being diagnosed with hereditary deafness and he advocated for the application of hygienic principle to diminish the rate of deaf news marriages. His hygienic stand was a bunch of clear There is another important suggestion which would do much to eliminate the conditional deaf news. It is sterilization. Every conditional deaf news should be sterilized. I'm afraid the statement is the bold one but I do not fear to say it here. Science has, fortunately for hygienic, made sterilization possible with a minimum of danger. Now far from being an outlier, McLeod Newsley stands with an extension of his college view for he argues that any treatment or study of the deaf child required cooperation between the hygienicists, the colleges and the legislator. Moreover, he added that where surgery fail or training and if necessary sterilization was required to reduce the incidence of deaf marriages for the incidence of deafness in future generations. As he declared, quote, where deaf mutants did not pre-assist, intermarriage were not created. The slide on the screen shows a group of deaf children in a classroom looking at the camera, the overlay text as conclusion. What is the history of the statistical studies Bob is speaking and concerns about hereditary deafness tell us then. For one thing, it underscores how hygienicists deeply inform much of modern medicine and deaf education. The data that was compiled by artists and educators presented a somewhat worrisome picture of what could occur of deafness, especially hereditary deafness, was not adequately managed. A deaf variety would emerge, social program would be drained and taxpayer would bear a greater burden from financing deaf education. Secondly, despite the rich history of sign language, deaf community and deaf culture, this history shows how deafness is perceived primarily as a medical problem that requires a fix. And thus, the increasing inequities in various deaf people faced and continue to face are further complicated by the fact that this hygienicist agenda of eliminating deafness or at the very least preventing a deaf variety of deaf culture remains an ultimate goal for medical science. Yet far from being the sinister dystopian scenario led by ambitious and calorie scientists, these hygienicist perspectives are so truly embedded in society that the future potential of a deafness cure is regularly celebrated as a triumph of science, even though the more implications remain debatable concern. Thank you. So thank you so much, Professor Beardy. Your lecture was brilliant and as a historian of both eugenics and also contemporary science and medicine, particularly the Human Genome Project, gave me so much to think about. So audience members, we look forward to your questions in the Q&A. And I'm also joined by Mike Rembus, who is the director for disability studies, the center for disability studies at the University at Buffalo. And I have so many questions for you, Professor Beardy, but I thought I would let Mike lead off if he would like, because I think he has a very, very good question for you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. And thank you, Jepreet, for your presentation. It was very enlightening, very interesting. I think the connections with and kind of parallels to the United States and also the international focus that you're taking is really, really interesting and compelling. I am wondering about the ability to study deaf people themselves in this history, which, of course, you know, is a priority for disability historians. I mean, I think the connections with eugenics and educators and policymakers is really fascinating and interesting and important. And I'm wondering if you could speak either about the methodological constraints and limitations on doing a disability history that incorporates the voices and experiences of disabled people themselves, you know, either speak to that issue or actually talk about how you're thinking about incorporating deaf people into your study. Yeah, thank you. Good seeing you, by the way. But one of the tenors doing research in disability history, as you know, and for our audience, is to center the experiences of disabled people. That is very challenging to do when so much of the archival work casts these experiences through medical, able-to-eugenics perspective. So we don't really get a real sense of what deaf and disabled people are actually thinking about the medical-eugenics prescription that were leveled against them. And when I first started working on this project, Medicalizing Deafness, I was really just about that, about how deafness seemed to be medicalized and what kind of implications that have on not just education, but also our understanding of deafness collectively as a society, as well as the prescriptions that were provided to medical and surgical wellers. But I'm very interested in viewing how either deaf people were part of this medicalizing aspect or the resistors against it. And this is, I'm still working on this part, like I'm still looking for deaf history from deaf people by deaf people in the archives. And it is proving to be very challenging. In one sense, because if we look at the history of deaf people, specifically deaf people who communicate with sign language, it's a very visual language. So it's not something that's captured on text that are maintained in 1932 archives. So I really kind of have to read against the brain in some ways. So this is still an incomplete project, the top-down history done. But I want to bring the lived experiences of deafness here and plan to go back to the archive to kind of look for that. But it also begs the broader question about the kind of history we keep in the archive. My real concern when the world school for deaf children was closing down was, I feel bad for the children who lose all the education, but I was also thinking as a historian, what's going to happen to this archive that I spent over five years trying to access. So now they've been kept and they're in the 10th council maintained at a historical society. So I'm planning to go back. But what I learned also, the majority of the material there are 20th century. The school was founded in 1782. So the records between then and the late 19 or 20th century have been lost or damaged or very fragmented. So I think it brings even more questions about the kind of history we value Thank you. So Mike, do you have a follow up? Otherwise I can I can ask my my rather broad question to continue this really fascinating and I think deeply moving discussion. Yeah, no, you go ahead, Chris. Okay, I should also say, for the severity that as an archivist myself, this is a this is a question that I'm constantly trying to think about, particularly in the context of contemporary science and technology and and really thinking about how are we missing disabled voices? How can we capture them? How can we give disabled voices actors and agency, particularly in the context of contemporary science and medicine, when those perspectives are still so complex, and we don't have intervening years in many ways, that do their own kind of interpretation time is a kind of interpretation in many ways. Because it allows it gives us a certain kind of distance, but it also imposes a certain certain elements that we we can only recover certain things. So I'm deeply interested in this question. My follow up question is, we have as a historian of both contemporary science and medicine and eugenics, I'm always wondering how do we think about contemporary science and medicine like precision medicine, genomics, which for many individuals, particularly in rare disease communities, cancer, where there are clear examples where interventions and modern science really helps people. But it's so entwined with eugenics, statistics as a science is so entwined with eugenics. How do we parse out sort of the this intertwining? How do we talk about the history of these sciences in an informed way, looking at the grievous harms, looking at the benefits and really thinking about the complexities of these issues, if that makes sense. That's a great broad question. One of the I think one of the messages I was finding my first book hearing happiness was that people always have options to select what kind of cure they want for themselves. The issue for me at least, not the issue, the problem and when the solution of presenting as the only option, and therefore to get a very specific way of being. So in other words, deafness is an auditory variation. It's a spectrum that ranges from hearing to complete deafness. And between that spectrum, people have, you know, varied, where the communication of developing the identity of deciding what kind of medical prescription they want for themselves. But when we look at this idea of medical science and genomics as the ultimate solution, and one day we're going to find this genetic treatment that can eliminate all kinds of growing diseases. I think people want that, like if they're really worried about a denimbrating, disabling, hereditary disease that puts themselves at risk. I think they want that option. It should be given to them. But when we eliminate choice, I think that's when the moral quandary is raised. So I'm thinking of like newborn hearing testing, which is done, I don't know, for two days, three days when a child is born. And the concern after, you know, you do the newborn test and the screening child, the child has hearing loss or the child had deafness. When that reading is presented to the parent or the mother, it's always medicalized. It's always, okay, here's what we're going to do to fix that. Neuro is another medical expert. Neuro is an oncologist. But it's very rare that amongst this conversation, there is a representative of the deaf community there. It's very, very rare to do that. So most deaf children are born to hearing parents. But hearing parents are not always the worst in sign language or the deaf community. So without that option to raise a child deaf, if they wanted to, the only solution there is presented is the medical one. So I think your question also brings before how we think about the value of this year for a society. Do we want a society for the variation? Or do we want everybody to kind of be funneled or do the degenerates impulse of what we consider or what we define as a normal citizen? No, I think that's an incredibly important answer. And actually it anticipated the audience question. So thank you very much. This also gives me pause to say that I think there's a lot of ethics bioethics coming around, coming out right now, which tries to address, for example, enhancement, sort of, you know, sort of gene therapy for disability and really pushing to the idea that if disabilities are positive things as we view them, as society views them, then there should be that kind of enhancement as well, that that is enhancement. And I think these are very interesting questions about how medicine routinely normalizes the body and how we are in these frameworks that are very much routinized and not really thought of in ways that I think are critical. So thank you so much for your discussion. Mike, do you have another question as I follow up to mine? I do have a question. It's not so much a follow up, but it's, I think, perhaps related. It's more of a historical question about eugenics. Eugenicists played a pretty prominent role in your presentation. And I think the kind of characterization of Britain among historians of eugenics is that they were slightly more reluctant to engage in so-called negative eugenics, you know, they weren't kind of as as wedded to things like, you know, marriage restrictions, immigration restrictions, sterilization, institutionalization, as say the United States and Germany. And but eugenicists seem to play a really prominent role in your talk today. And so I'm just, I'm wondering if you can elaborate and say a little bit more about, you know, what the effects were on the deaf community, whether eugenicists were able to kind of, you know, implement some of the plans that they were considering and talking about and just speak more to the to the role of eugenics in deaf education and the lives of deaf people in the UK? Yeah, the idea of eugenics in the Buddhist contrast of deaf education was largely about preventing deaf intermarriages between people who were identified as having hereditary deafness. And this was as easy as just doing a family history, like which deaf schools were kind of doing for pretty much entire 19th century. They were just tracing the ways of generational deafness and keeping track of that data, so basically like family charts. And the recommendations from many apologists, educators, etc. was that if you have been identified as a member of a family that has generational deafness, then you should be prevented mostly through encouragement, like encouraging you not to marry another deaf person, especially one with hereditary deafness. So yes, it wasn't as, it wasn't really an aspect of negative eugenics that we see in other countries. And first of all, mentally or spiritually, was an outlier, like not, there wasn't a lot of push for sterilization in the late 19th, early 20th century, mostly because I would argue that the institutional basis for that wasn't as implemented in place as with other disabilities, because sterilization was happening with people who have mental disabilities or race physical disability. I'm still, to be honest, unpacking just how prevailing a negative eugenics was, if at all, within this history beyond, first of all, mentally or spiritually. But he also presented his negative eugenics like in a positive spin, like if we do this, the taxpayer won't have to pay so much for deaf education. He presented it as part of the necessity for medical civilians at that school. So for him, there wasn't stuff for it to start paying. It was part of the medical prevention program that he was already creating for a deaf school. Thanks. Thank you. So no, that was fantastic response. One question I had just to end, unfortunately, because we're about at time is I was noticing in your presentation a lot of discussion of class. And I'm just thinking was deafness and disability in this context racialized in any way in Britain? Because this is actually the case in Eastern Europe, for example, or what's known sort of broadly as Eastern Europe around the same time where individuals with certain hereditary conditions are explicitly racialized. And I was wondering if you saw any, any, any dynamics between class and race and racialization, even if it is implicit. So sorry for the scholarly question at the very end. I just had to ask. That's okay. Clash, definitely. So even some deaf school high class, like the class that divided by members of the working class, the more preferred student race, I don't know yet. I am currently researching that. Because I think it does bring an important dimension to this history. But at this point in my research, I don't know. I should also mention the first time I'm presenting this research. Okay, so unfortunately, we are we are a little bit over time. So I have to end this really rich and impactful discussion. So thank you, Professor Verity. Thank you to Mike. Thank you to our audience and our interpreters and our captioners. We are going to be on on break for the next 30 minutes, and we will return at 11 30. Thank you very much. See you then.