Disability History

DSAB

620

Disability History

This course focuses on some of the Western, pre-modern notions of disability, such as the sacred and the profane and the ugly and grotesque, inherited from classical antiquity and Christianity. The course also constructs a history of persons with disabilities in the U.S. by concentrating primarily on the modern era beginning with institutionalization in the Jacksonian and Civil War eras. The course reviews the history of persons with disabilities, highlighting the so-called hierarchy of disabilities. The course also examines why social history, the history of everyday lives that is the dominant methodology among historians, has scarcely been applied to people with disabilities until the advent of Disability Studies.

Spring

Graduate

Yes