Doctoral Dissertation Research: Everyday Prosthesis: Stories of Ampuation, Technology, and Body

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This Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant--by the Science, Technology & Society (STS) program at NSF--supports research on the everyday experiences and meanings of prosthetics to the people who use them. The image of an amputee using a prosthetic body part has inspired much thought about the parallels between bodies and machines in modernity, but scholars have yet to explore if these ideas are borne out in the actual experiences of amputees. This dissertation research collects stories of and reflections on recovery and rehabilitation after amputation in order to elaborate on theories that employ prosthesis as a metaphor for human relations with technology and the meaning of being human. The project asks how medical procedure and assistive technology can influence ideas about the body and the self and then apply these insights to issues in technology studies, disability studies, and bioethics. Data are collected in the form of 50 in-depth interviews with people who began using an artificial limb in the last 6 years. To capture a range of experiences, a diverse group of amputees will be interviewed, including men and women and those who have lost limbs due to trauma and disease. The presentation and analysis of these narratives will focus on how amputees come to interpret their bodies and prosthetic limbs and how these interpretations reflect or reinvent popular thinking about the body. The final dissertation thesis and related publications will contribute to the literature a varied account of amputation and recovery. The results should be of interest to scholars of medicine and rehabilitation, as well as to amputees and their families. Further, the dissertation will explore how the experience of amputation and use of prostheses can inform STS theories about body, self, and disability.