“The medical industry is always trying to preserve women’s ovaries to have a baby,” lamented Erin Barnett, a woman with […]
Reclaiming Richard III’s Disability
It’s been 10 years since archaeologists discovered Richard III’s skeleton under a parking lot in Leicester, England. But historians haven’t […]
Eugenics Was Wrong Even When It Got It Right
Ann Leary’s 2022 novel The Foundling follows a young white woman, Mary Engle, who in the 1930s lands a job […]
Disability (and) Politics: The Fetterman Fiasco of Fall 2022
In Fall 2022, conservative pundits condemned Senator-elect John Fetterman (D-PA), who had survived a stroke the previous spring, using discriminatory […]
Reading Disability History Back into American Girl
I recently spent a series of afternoons digging through closets at my parents’ house, searching for my sisters’ and my […]
Can every baby be a Gerber Baby? A century of American baby contests and eugenics
In 2018, Gerber made headlines for selecting baby Lucas as the winner of its Spokesbaby Contest, making Lucas the first […]
The Applied Behavior Analysis Controversy: Normalizing or Cruel?
One parent said, “Our involvement with ABA remains one of my biggest parenting regrets.” Another said, “This treatment saved my […]
A Year of Personal Growth: My First Year with Hearing Loss
Growth is not always linear. My onset of unilateral idiopathic sensorineural hearing loss (also known as sudden, one-sided inner-ear hearing […]
Finding Friendship and Frustration in the Archive of an Institution for the “Feebleminded”
The methodology proposed by “Archival Kismet” is to go where the archive leads you (while bearing in mind, of course, […]
Reclaiming Disability Space in an Ableist Society: A Review of Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility
Former president Donald Trump publicly mocked and disparaged disabled people, weakened the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals […]
