Matthew Rubery, “Methodologies of Reading in a Neurodiverse World”

For most of us, learning to read is an important milestone in our intellectual development. This accomplishment is a cornerstone on which our educations and professional lives are built, and one of the primary mechanisms through which we connect with the world. But for some people, specifically those affected by neurological disorders such as dyslexia or dementia, reading can be an experience fraught with challenges. NHC Fellow Matthew Rubery seeks to understand how such “neurodivergent” individuals employ different methodologies of reading, ultimately experiencing and analyzing the world in more complex ways. In this podcast, he contends that we need to stop understanding reading as a uniform and one-dimensional process. By enlarging our definitions of reading, we can establish more inclusive practices around the way that we view texts, methodologies, and readers themselves.