For over two decades, scholars have argued (and demonstrated) that disability can and should be considered a category of historical analysis, much like race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and/or gender; while also noting that disability is not just another "other" and acknowledging how the boundaries of disability are constantly changing. This course introduces students to this rich body of work, and demonstrates how disability can and does operate as a category of historical analysis and social difference.

Thinking critically and expansively about disability, students in this course will explore chronic illness, madness, cognitive and intellectual impairments, sensory differences, physical impairments, and chronic pain among other diagnoses/corporeal experiences; and explore how societies, cultures, medicine, and law across the world have responded to such experiences and differences.

How have disability historians complicated/nuanced/extended existing historical narratives of slavery, colonialism, eugenics, immigration, science, medicine, and technology? What kind of narratives and art have disabled people themselves produced about their experiences through time, and what do they tell us about disability history? How has disability intersected and fractured and co-constituted other categories of difference like race and gender? Why, in short, does it matter for students of the past to think through the lens of disability?

The course will also introduce students to a range of models and theoretical frameworks to understand disability histories and experiences, including the medical and social models of disabilities, feminist disability theories, and more but also examine both the limits and possibilities of these models/theories for graduate students in history and indeed, other fields. In addition, students will learn how to use social, cultural, and legal history methods as well as material culture, etc. to unpack disability histories.

The course would be well suited for students with an interest in the histories of the body, medicine, science, disease, but would also be suited for a more general audience.

This course plans to consider disability histories from diverse spaces and periods, and thus would be suited for students with various geographic interests.