Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, and writer who teaches design for disability at Olin College of Engineering. Her work has been exhibited widely and is held in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt design museum; her writing and design work have been featured in The New York Times and Fast Company and on NPR. Hendren has been a fellow at New America and the Carey Institute for Global Good. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.
Praise for What Can a Body Do?:
"What Can a Body Do? models its subject. It has
well-made sentences and an elegant structure. . . . But Hendren's
project also has a kind of deep beauty that is neither separable
from design nor fully accountable to it. Some molecular-level
harmony obtains when writing seems so committed to being both
interesting and humane. . . . Hendren's humanism shines.... As
[she] writes, disability 'reveals just how unfinished the world
really is.' Her gift, perhaps, is to see that as an invitation."
-The New Yorker
"In prose infused with tenderness, Hendren tosses away the idea
that disability is a problem to be solved and instead shows how
humans' adaptation to the built environment is a wonder to behold."
-NPR
"For Hendren, disability is not a problem
to be solved or a flaw to be cured: diverse bodies generate
alternative understandings of the built world and should encourage
us to question what we accept as 'standard.'"-The Baffler
"Few books are capable of making you see the world in a
fundamentally new way and this is one of them." -National
Association of Science Writers
"Hendren illustrates a powerful idea that holds potential for the
fields of urbanism, architecture, and design. . . . [the] book
ripples with a sense of generative possibility around how these
unique perspectives help us see the world in a different way and
emancipate new ways of living together." -Public Books
"Sara Hendren's graceful, generous book invites us to create a more
accessible, humane world of coexistence that thoughtfully meets
bodies where they are." -LitHub
"Hendren shows that the purpose of accessible design should
not be to fix a body, but rather to meet the body where it is. . .
. Fascinating." -BookPage
"Hendren sees the world as it might flex and bend. . . . With
intimacy, curiosity, and a bright sense of possibility, [she]
investigates . . . the ways our diverse bodies interact with the
world around us." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The questions [Hendren] asks. . . spark a contagious curiosity. .
. . It's hard not to look up and see your surroundings in a
different light." -Humanities
"Hendren makes us aware of the many ways we inhabit-and
could inhabit-ourselves and the material world, including the
difficult question of what 'the good life' really is. Nothing will
look the same after reading this." -Jenny Odell, author of
How to Do Nothing
"This book illuminates both the daunting specificity and the
inspiring universality of what most fundamentally shapes and
challenges the work of design: our own bodies. Hendren forever
reimagines the way we engage the built environment." -Michael
Bierut, partner, Pentagram
"Hendren's powerful, imaginative stories open up new mental and
physical worlds for all of us, allowing us to renew our
relationship to time, technology, and one another." -Anne-Marie
Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business and The
Chessboard and the Web
"Spare, elegant, and charismatic, this book is a call to carry out
our ethical commitment to justice and access; it's packed with
stories and ideas that show us the way." -Rosemarie
Garland-Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies
"I love Sara Hendren's mind. What Can A Body Do? opened my eyes to
how thinking about disability can provide us all creative
opportunities to make a better world for everyone." - Austin
Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist
"A poetic, pragmatic, and powerful invitation to unmake and remake
the world for every body. This book is transformative!" -Ruha
Benjamin, author of Race After Technology
"Thoughtful and compelling. Hendren makes a very strong case for
taking into account humanity in all its irregularities when
remaking the world." -Henry Petroski, author of To Engineer
Is Human
"In her beautiful and brilliant What Can a Body Do, Sara Hendren
helps us begin to imagine and enact a better world for human
flourishing. If you are human, you need to read this
book."-Cathy N. Davidson, author of The New Education
"An urgent work, told with compassion and authority. There is room
for us all in this essential book." -Joanne McNeil, author of
Lurking
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