Society of Scholars
The Society of Scholars is an intellectual community of humanists of diverse generations, academic ranks, and departmental affiliations who contribute to and learn from one another’s work. Each year, approximately eight faculty and three dissertation research fellowships support members of the Society of Scholars. Scholars in year-long residence at the University of Washington may be invited to participate as well. The group meets biweekly throughout the year to discuss their research in progress.
Apply for the Fellowship (Faculty)
2025 - 2026 Society of Scholars
2019 - 2020 Society of Scholars Fellow
Lily Shapiro (she/her/hers)
(Re)Constructing the Body: Factory Accidents and Reconstructive Surgery in South India
My project explores reconstructive plastic surgeries that occur as the result of factory accidents in South India. Occupational injuries have been explored in headlines news as well as the academy mainly with an emphasis on catastrophic industrial accidents, eliding the fact that these incidents, far from being extraordinary, are built into the normal conditions of factory labor. How is the laboring body both constructed and reconstructed through hand and arm injuries and their attendant surgeries? Using ethnographic techniques, I examine the relations between the body, work, and care, revealing how capitalism depends not only on the consumption of bodies in labor, but also on their rehabilitation. Invigorating the accident itself as an important analytic lens, I rethink existing understandings of the laboring body, the stakes of occupational injury, and daily practices of labor and care.