Neurodiversity, madness and disability are at the centre of the work being undertaken by three academics who join Matthew Sweet to look at the history of ideas about "normality". Dr Robert Chapman is Assistant Professor of Critical Neurodiversity Studies at Durham University and author of Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Dr Louise Creechan is also at Durham University and is working on a book about literacy in the nineteenth century. Dr Sarah Chaney researches the history of emotions at Queen Mary University of London and is the author of Am I Normal?: The 200-Year Search for Normal People (and Why They Don’t Exist).
Producer: Julian Siddle
You can find other Free Thinking discussions featuring Louise Creechan exploring How We Read, and looking at accents in Language, the Victorian and us.
New Thinking: Playhouses and opera-going
New Thinking: Food
New Thinking: Writing exile and overcoming statelessness
African identity via China and photography
Robert Aickman
Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking
Sleep
Sankofa and Afrofuturism
Valis and Philip K Dick
Humours and The Body
Victorian colour, jewellery and metalwork
New Thinking: Work and protest
Being Blonde
The Frieze/Radio 3 Museum Directors Debate 2023
Art, Kew, a symphony and nature
New Thinking: Modernism, exile and homelessness
Faith, consciousness and creating meaning in life
Refuge and National Poetry Day
Slavic culture and myth
Hobbes and New Leviathans
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Global News Podcast
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins