Join guest speaker Katie Booth, author of “The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness,” at 1 p.m. March 20 on the University of Pittsburgh campus at the William Pitt Union-Lower Lounge. A virtual attendance option is also available when registering.
Invention of Miracles is a story of brilliance and a reminder of the ethical responsibilities of great minds. Taking place in the Victorian Age and an era of expansive innovation and invention, Booth (who grew up in a mixed hearing/ deaf family) tells parallel stories: the first details the advent of one of the world’s most famous inventions, the telephone, while the second powerfully reveals the many unintended and dire consequences that were perpetrated during this time by its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell.
The lecture is being hosted by the University of Pittsburgh's Dick Thornburgh Forum for Law & Public Policy and the Institute of Politics at the Thornburgh Family Lecture Series on Disability Law & Policy.
Booth’s work has appeared in The Believer, Harper's Magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and elsewhere, and has been recognized by Longform, Longreads and Best American Essays. Booth has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Library of Congress. The Invention of Miracles, her first book, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021, and it was a New York Times editors’ choice, a finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, a finalist for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, and runner-up for the Mark Lynton History Prize from the Columbia School of Journalism and the Neiman Foundation of Harvard.Booth’s biographical account of Alexander Graham Bell depicts a passionate and brilliant man who gained international fame racing to invent the telephone while he was also fixated on curing deafness by teaching the deaf to speak. Each of his pursuits originated from a place of love — for his mother and his wife each of whom lived with non-congenital deafness, and for his father who was an internationally renowned elocutionist. Despite his good intentions, Bell had a profound and long-lasting negative impact on the language development and education of the world’s deaf community in the 19th and 20th centuries. This impact continues today.
As the story unfolds, Booth demonstrates that good intentions can easily be corrupted by the absence and the denial of scientific data.
Join us to learn more!
This lecture will be moderated by Dr. Kenneth DeHaan, professor and director of the M.A. in Sign Language Education Program at Gallaudet University.
Refreshments will be served. This lecture is free and open to the public. Registration is requested.
Parking suggested at Soldiers and Sailors auditorium garage.
REGISTER NOW
Visit our website at: www.thornburghforum.pitt.edu
Question? Email: [email protected]
