February Narrative Medicine Rounds with Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink

All in the Family: Disability Lineage and the Future of Genetic Testing, a conversation with Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink 

Moderated by Joseph Eveld, 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 socio-historical 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. Dr. Jennifer Natalya Fink will be in conversation with Joseph Eveld, 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.