What Can A Body Do? Discussion Guide

On Wednesday, July 22, 2022 the AD EX, bcWORKSHOP, and DFW NOMA hosted a book discussion with author Sara Hendren. The questions and prompts provided were developed for that discussion and can be used for your own book club.

If you are planning a discussion of your own, or have any questions or comments to add, please share! Email info@dallasadex.org.

Use The Questions and Prompts Below to Lead Your Discussion

In the beginning of the book, the author talks about her students and the process they go through to discover their final product doesn’t have to be technologically complicated to address the given brief. Can a high-technology approach be a limiting factor to creating designs solutions? What combination of high-tech and low-tech approaches do you see throughout the rest of the book?

On page 23, the author refers to the students’ hesitation to ask certain questions to the clients they are collaborating with. How should students or designers approach their client’s unique needs, and go about establishing common terminology for potentially difficult conversations?

Do you think that a lived experience or direct connection is needed when collaborating with communities or cultures that you not a part of in order to create a successful design product for that community/culture?

The description of the ADA and their process of creating cardboard furniture was really captivating – cardboard is sometimes dismissed as a messy or rough material not fit for a finished product, but it’s actually really amazing. What are some of your favorite things you’ve seen made out of cardboard?

Looking to Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer and the nurses’ shock that she didn’t want to use the prosthetic, not necessarily for her sake but for the morale of others. Many of the prosthetics you describe are highly functional and assistive, but some are more about creating a sense of being “normal” – how should we be more skeptical of the prosthetics whose main goal is seeking a mainstream or commonly held vision of “normal”?

In the Street chapter the author talks about curb cuts as change that benefits everyone, not just disabled people. Were you familiar with the political nature of curb cuts and how they came to be? Does it make you look at the built environment differently in terms of how certain commonplace items or features might be more assistive or accommodating then they currently are?

“…Our social imagination is the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools” is a quote from Maxine Greene on page 204. What do you think about this statement and the ideas the author is putting forward about “making assistance visible”? How could you see that being applied in your life or work?

To learn more about the Design Justice Book Club, click here!