Overview
I teach and research at the intersection of disability studies, medical anthropology, and science, technology & society (STS).
I am interested in the politics of medicine—in particular, in how disabled and chronically ill people contend with the precarity of their bodies when biomedical explanation falls short and treatments fail.
My first book manuscript is Sick Work: Illness, Exhaustion, and the Making of ME/CFS(in contract with Duke University Press). It looks at a disease defined by exhaustion after any form of exertion: myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a debilitating but misunderstood and neglected condition that emerged as a diagnostic category in the 1980s. Recontextualizing the emergence of ME/CFS, I argue it takes work to be ill: living in an ill body is laborious, and moreover, regimes of capitalism structure who counts as a legitimately ill body worthy of support and recognition.
My new work is on HIV/AIDS, activism, and alternative medicine.
I am interdisciplinarily trained with degrees from Sarah Lawrence College (BA) and New York University (PhD, American Studies).
Website: emilylimrogers.com
(Photo by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr)