Episode 46 Resources: The History of Disability, Lessons from the Past

Websites

• Disability Timeline
  This guide is designed to assist youth with and without disabilities to learn about the rich history of people with disabilities. Although designed primarily for youth and emerging leaders with disabilities, the guide can be used in multiple ways to educate a broader audience as well. 
  National Consortium on Leadership and Disability for Youth
  Link: www.ncld-youth.info/index.php?id=43
• Museum of Disability History
  The Museum of disABILITY History is dedicated to advancing the understanding, acceptance and independence of people with disabilities. The Museum’s exhibits, collections, archives and educational programs create awareness and a platform for dialogue and discovery.
  Link: museumofdisability.org
• EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America 
  A Virtual Museum that presents encounters with history through the material record of the people who lived it. How the story unfolds depends on how you, the visitor, shuffle it.
  Link: everybody.si.edu
• Disability History Museum
  The Disability History Museum hosts a Library of virtual artifacts, Education curricula, and Museum exhibits. These programs are designed to foster research and study about the historical experiences of people with disabilities and their communities.
  Link: www.disabilitymuseum.org
• National Museum of American History “The Disability Rights Movement”
  This exhibit physically existed in the gallery from July 2000 to July 2001. Now it is only available on the web. This Web site represents what a visitor to the museum would encounter when using one of the kiosks in the physical exhibition. The kiosks are Web-based prototypes being developed for museum use. Because of the innovative nature of these prototypes, we have had to test and assess them throughout the process.
  Source: Smithsonian Natural Museum of History
  Link: americanhistory.si.edu/disabilityrights/welcome.html
• National Museum of American History Homepage 
  Because the history of disability is the history of people, it is layered with objects, innovation, struggle, emotion, drama, and surprise. The group “People with Disabilities” has always been the largest “minority” group in America. This reality raises one of the most ignored questions in history is: Why is disability seldom a part of the story? This hub gathers together various aspects of the museum that place people who are different, atypical, non-normative, or diverse –and consequently tagged as disabled or impaired –in the story of America, where everyone belongs.
  Link:  americanhistory.si.edu/topics/disability-history
• History of Learning Disability
  We are a group of academics researching the history of learning disability, the history of intellectual disability, and the history of developmental disability. (Labels can vary, and we follow UK practice by using “learning disability” to cover all of them.) They are the poor relations of disability history, and are largely absent from the history of psychology in general
  Link: www.historyoflearningdisability.com
• Disability Social History Project
  The Disability History Project is a community history project and we welcome your participation. This is an opportunity for disabled people to reclaim our history and determine how we want to define ourselves and our struggles. People with disabilities have an exciting and rich history that should be shared with the world. Please email us about anything that you would like to see become part of the Disability Social History Project, including your disabled heroes, important events in disability history, and resources.
  Link: www.disabilityhistory.org
• Forum on Disability in History
  A spate of recent articles has declared disability to be the next academic frontier, an analytic category with the transformative potential of race, class, sexuality, and gender. Not everyone is buying it, however. Responding to an American Historical Review essay by Catherine Kudlick, “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other,'” the blogger “Invisible Adjunct” insisted that “the enterprise smacks of academic opportunism. Now that we’ve exhausted the possibilities for race, class, and gender, runs the subtext, it is time to find or else to create for ourselves a new Other.”
  Source: American Historical Association
  Link: www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/november-2006/disability-in-history
• Eugenics Archives
  Eugenics Archive grows to 2200+ items. Browse 950 new photos, papers, and data – including extensive collections from noted eugenicists. Discover Francis Galton’s work on fingerprint analysis and composite portraiture, and read Charles Davenport’s treatise, Eugenics: The Science of Human Improvement by Better Breeding, presented in its entirety. Explore Arthur Estabrook’s field photos of subjects of his (in)famous studies: The Jukes in 1915, Mongrel Virginians, and The Nam Family. Click the “Search the Archive” button to access the image database.Link: www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/branch.pl
• H-Disability Discussion Network
  H-Disability is a scholarly network that explores the multitude of historical issues surrounding the experience and phenomenon of ‘disability.’ H-Disability was established in response to the growing academic interest and expanding scholarly literature on issues of disability throughout the world.
  Link: networks.h-net.org/h-disability
• H-Eugenics Discussion Network
  The purpose of H-Eugenics is to provide a forum for the history of eugenics. This includes discussion of primary and secondary sources related to the history of eugenics; discussion or debate on specific aspects of the history of eugenics as they occur to list participants; ideas for books, articles, courses, or other scholarly projects on the history of eugenics; reviews of books and other scholarly literature related to the history of eugenics; and discussion of the relationship of 21st century biomedical procedures and genetic modification to eugenics ( i.e., “neo-eugenics”).
  Link: networks.h-net.org/h-eugenics

Articles

• A Creature of Its Time: The Pension Bureau
  Authors: Larry Logue & Peter Blanck
  Source: Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum
  Link: www.clarabartonmuseum.org/pension/

Books

• Paul K. Longmore, Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability
  (Temple University Press, 2003)
• Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, eds.,The New Disability History: American Perspectives
  (New York University Press, 2001)
• Douglas C. Baynton, Defectives in the Land: Disability and Immigration in the Age of Eugenics
  (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
• Larry M. Logue and Peter Blanck, Race, Ethnicity, and Disability: Union Veterans in Post-Civil War America
  (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• Larry M. Logue and Peter Blanck, Heavy Laden: Union Veterans, Psychological Illness, and Suicide
  (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2018)
• Martin F. Norden, The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies
  (Rutgers University Press, 1994)
• Susan Burch, Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to World War II
  (New York University Press, 2004)
• Susan Burch, ed., Encyclopedia of American Disability History
  (Facts on File, 2009) [PDF 1106 pgs]
• David A. Gerber, ed., Disabled Veterans in History
  (University of Michigan Press, 2000)
• Beth Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America
  (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
• Sarah F. Rose, No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s–1930s
  (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
• Audra Jennings, Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America
  (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)
• Susan M Schweik, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public
  (New York University Press, 2009)
• Kim E. Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States
  (Beacon Press, 2012)
• Kim E. Nielsen, The Radical Lives of Helen Keller
  (New York University Press, 2009)
• Dea H. Boster, African American Slavery and Disability: Bodies, Property, and Power in the Antebellum South, 1800-1860
  (Routledge, 2013)
• James W. Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States
  (Oxford University Press, 2016)