We look forward to having you join us for the 2020 Warren A. Sawyer Lecture!

The Warren A. Sawyer Lecture, sponsored by the Waring Historical Library, will be held Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 6:00 PM virtually on WebEx. Dr. Jaipreet Virdi, from the University of Delaware, will present, "The Usual HEARzone: Selling Deafness Cures in 20th Century America." Dr. Jaipreet Virdi's lecture will feature her new book, Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History, which will be published by the University of Chicago Press and available in September 2020.

Born in Kuwait to Sikh parents, Virdi lost her hearing at age four to bacterial meningitis. By age six, her working-class family immigrated to Toronto, Ontario where she would later attend a school for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. A product of “mainstreamed” education, Virdi learned to lip-read and rely on her hearing aids. She attended public high schools then received her Bachelors’ degree in the philosophy of science from York University. After graduation, she took time off to work in marketing and fashion merchandising, before deciding to return to school. She received first her masters, then her doctorate, from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, focusing on the history of medicine and technology. Her PhD dissertation is titled “From the Hands of Quacks:” Aural Surgery, Deafness, and the Making of a Specialty in Nineteenth-Century London.

As an educator, Virdi has taught at Ryerson University, the University of Toronto, and Brock University. She is currently an Assistant 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.

Seating is limited and registration is required by Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 12PM to reserve your seat and receive log in information. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact the Waring at 843-792-2288 or waringhl@musc.edu.

The Warren A. Sawyer Lecture is named in memory of Warren Sawyer who served as Director of Libraries at the Medical University of South Carolina from 1968 until his death in November 1989. Mr. Sawyer was born in Bay Shore, New York, and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia and earned his MS in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He contributed to local and national functions in roles as diverse as Secretary to the University Faculty and member of the Biomedical Library Review Committee of the National Library of Medicine. Mr. Sawyer was a long-time member of the Waring Library Society of which he served as president.