“All in the Family: Disability Lineage and the Future of Genetic Testing,” a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink moderated by Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA.
For our first rounds of the spring semester, we have the privilege of welcoming Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink, award-winning author and co-founder of Georgetown's Program in Disability Studies, who will be speaking about her recent book All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship.
In All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship, Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink weaves together stories of members of her own family with sociohistorical research to illustrate how the eradication of disabled people from family narratives is rooted in racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic sorting systems inherited from Nazis. By examining the rhetoric of genetic testing, she shows that a fear of disability begins before a child is even born and that a fear of disability is, fundamentally, a fear of care. Dr. Fink analyzes our racist and sexist care systems, exposing their inequities as a source of stigmatizing ableism.
Inspired by queer and critical race theory, Dr. Fink calls for a lineage of disability: a reclamation of disability as a history, a culture, and an identity. Such a lineage offers a means of seeing disability in the context of a collective sense of belonging, as cause for celebration, and is a call for a radical reimagining of carework and kinship. All Our Families challenges us to re-lineate disability within the family as a means of repair toward a more inclusive and flexible structure of care and community.
Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink is a professor of English at Georgetown University. She is also the co-founder, former director, and current core faculty in Georgetown's Program in Disability Studies. Dr. Fink is the author of seven award-winning books, including All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship (Beacon: 2022). She has written about disability lineage and neurodiversity for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and many other mainstream press venues. An equally committed teacher and researcher, Dr. Fink received the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence and the President's Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers. A lifelong learner, she recently completed a certificate from the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. Fink is a 2024 recipient of the Fulbright Peer Specialist award, and is currently at work on Neuropsyches: Neurodiversity, Narrativity, and the New Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink will be in conversation with Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA, Program Manager for the Division of Narrative Medicine and lecturer in creative writing and disability and illness narratives for the Narrative Medicine MS and Certificate programs.
