Spark Talk: “Recomposing Consciousness” by John Marlovits and Matthew Wolf-Meyer (Mar. 7th, 2025)
Mar 7, 2025
10:30AM to 11:30AM
Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/03/2025
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Description: Drawing on perspectives from disability studies, medical anthropology, and psychological anthropology, we argue that what has taken to be “normal” models and ideals of human consciousness arbitrarily exclude ways of being in the world that are atypical. Reviewing ongoing research projects on disability and communication and mental illness and aesthetic movements, we demonstrate how more capacious models of consciousness provide the foundation for more inclusive politics that act against biologically reductive approaches.
Bios: John Marlovits is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at San Jose State University. His work focuses on psychiatry, affective geographies, and how mental health shapes aesthetic experience.
Matthew Wolf-Meyer is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is the author of The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life, Unraveling: Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age, and American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within.