Disability history

[Invader Zim]

I recently attended an academic paper on the subject of disability history. It was a very broad overview of the entire genre (for lack of a better word), I was wondering if anybody had some suggestions for further research or any ideas to raise for discussion?

[agnixie]

Do you want from a specific point of view? I can probably get some cultural stuff but my material tends to be specific to deafness.

For the "intro to the cultural view of disability" piece, Culture as Disability is usually the recommended reading. Nazi propaganda is interesting (well, as interesting as knowing that I'd be a black triangle can be) on the matter. For deaf people in general, from an americanocentric POV, there's Everybody Here Spoke Sign Language, by Nora Groce, which makes the interesting point that one of the reasons MVSL (Martha's Vineyard sign language) went extinct was the fact that the opening up of the island to tourism led to a relatively egalitarian maritime society becoming much less so, and in that aspect the deaf had a lower status, especially wrt tourist service industries (since while islanders could be expected to know MVSL, mainland tourists obviously didn't know it, and often lacked the patience, experience, or politeness to exchange notes - the opening of the Hartford school for the deaf also had an effect, to some extent, but the language only really went extinct in the early 20th or at the end of the 19th (Groce's informers were all generally old and had known some of the last signers), when the school was opened in 1817).

For general disability history, though, I admit I know relatively little outside of nazi stuff.

[blake 3:17]

Check out: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-politics-of-the-disability-rights-movement-by-ravi-malhotra

And a good book is Nothing About Us Without Us http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520224810