From the Sick Proletariat to the Executive Class: Lay Knowledge, Data, "Complex Chronic Illness," and "Mental Illness"
A History & Theory of New Media event
with Emily Lim Rogers, Assistant Professor, Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, and Olivia Banner, Director of Strategy and Operations, Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE), University of Washington
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Monday, March 1, 2027
5:00 — 6:30 PM
Eugene Jarvis Auditorium,
Grimes Engineering Center
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Chronically ill people who live without biomedical verification have long created their own ways of collecting and amassing knowledge (like their subjective symptoms) to make various political claims and obtain material gains such as legitimation in the eyes of the state, health insurance companies, or workers’ compensation determinations. The amassing of data has taken many forms of media, from office workers organizing around sick building syndrome in the 1970s via paper surveys, to early chronic fatigue syndrome email lists, to forums in the Web 2.0 era such as “PatientsLikeMe” popular among those with such diseases as fibromyalgia. But such amorphous illnesses are still plagued by uncertainty and sociomedical doubt. In our current era, AI-driven clinical startups appeal to chronically ill people through the notion that the power of large-language learning models — if enough people band together to input their data — will help better understand and treat disease, capturing symptoms into profit via the promise of cure. This talk explores the myriad ways that the labor of living with illness, and the data and collectivities that emerge from it, turn illness into capital, or by contrast push against it, and how the historical erasure/repression of insurgent practices to help people experiencing distress informs our current moment of venture capital, AI, etc.
About Emily Lim Rogers
Emily Lim Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. She recently published Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness (Duke University Press, 2026), an examination of the labor of living with chronic illness, looking at people with chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME/CFS) and the history of fatigue throughout US capitalism. Her second project is on the racial politics of “alternative medicine” in the US.
About Olivia Banner
Olivia Banner’s research and scholarship centers on past and present intercalations of media, technology, and disability. Previously Associate Professor of Critical Media Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, she now helps to lead the Center for Research and Education on Accessible Technology and Experiences (CREATE) at UW Seattle. She recently published Crip Screens: Countering Psychiatric Media Technologies (Duke UP, 2025).
About History & Theory of New Media Lecture Series
The History & Theory of New Media Lecture Series brings to campus leading humanities scholars working on issues of media transition and technological emergence. The series promotes new, interdisciplinary approaches to questions about the uses, meanings, causes, and effects of rapid or dramatic shifts in techno-infrastructure, information management, and forms of mediated expression. Presented by BCNM, these events are free and open to the public.
Accessibility
BCNM events are free and open to the public. This event will be held in-person, on the UC Berkeley campus. We strive to meet all access and accommodation needs. Please contact (raphaelcohen [at] berkeley.edu) with requests or questions.
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