Last Tuesday night, I rounded up a couple of friends and went to the Great Lives talk about Stephen Hawking. In all honesty, I did not know very much about Stephen Hawking before the event. I knew only the most basic stereotype of him; he was a disabled man who made great scientific discoveries and advancements for both his field and the human race as a whole. I felt guilty for having such a shallow and generic profile of him as I listened to his life story.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tThe talk was given by Kitty Ferguson, who had worked with Hawking before and was also a friend of his. Listening to someone who had a personal connection to such a well-known name changed how I perceived him. She gave him a new narrative, at least in my mind, by covering his life from childhood, marriages, friendships, and scientific contributions. While his disability was a prominent part of her talk, Ferguson never spoke about it in a discriminatory or defining way, it was just a fact of his life. She focused less on how ALS disabled him, and more on what he did in the midst of adjusting to his course of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, I think Ferguson\u2019s representation of Hawking as a brilliant person that happened to also be disabled was done really well. She used Hawking\u2019s life to inspire the audience, but not in a derogatory or self-serving way that used his disability for pity. Ferguson\u2019s talk left me feeling more connected and knowledgable about Stephen Hawking\u2019s great life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll leave you with this quote from her; \u201cHe helped us all, disabled or abled alike, to be less afraid.\u201d
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Last Tuesday night, I rounded up a couple of friends and went to the Great Lives talk about Stephen Hawking. In all honesty, I did not know very much about Stephen Hawking before the event. I knew only the most basic stereotype of him; he was a disabled man who made great scientific discoveries and … Continue reading “Rosemary’s Response to the Great Lives Series: Stephen Hawking”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,124],"class_list":["post-1809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-great-lives","tag-stephen-hawking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcJhts-tb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1811,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1809\/revisions\/1811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dislit2020.chris-foss.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}