Disability History Association

The Disability History Association (DHA) is an international non-profit organization that promotes the study of disabilities. This includes, but is not limited to, the history of individuals or groups with disabilities, perspectives on disability, representations/ constructions of disability, policy and practice history, teaching, theory, and disability and related social and civil rights movements.

The DHA defines both history and disability widely. This organization is both inclusive and international, reflected in its diverse topics and approaches. Membership is open to scholars, institutions and organizations, and others working in all geographic regions and all time periods.

The DHA offers its members a community of active and interesting historians; access to its resources page, which includes a newsletter, conference information, sample syllabi, and helpful links; as well as an opportunity to help build an exciting field.

As an academic organization, the Disability History Association strives to attract more professional and public attention to the importance of disability as a category of analysis and the histories of people with disabilities in the past and present. As the DHA website says: “This organization is both inclusive and international, reflected in our diverse topics and approaches. Membership is open to scholars, institutions and organizations, and others working in all geographic regions and all time periods.”[1] The Disability History Association is an affiliated member of the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) to promote inclusivity of disability in the profession and discipline.

History of the Disability History Association

The origin of the Disability History Association came from informal conversations by a group of pioneering disability scholars at the Summer Institute on Disability Studies in the Humanities at San Francisco State University in 2000.[2] The following year, they created H-Disability, a discussion group in the prominent online scholarly platform H-Net.[3] In 2004, the organization held its first board meeting, and then the community was incorporated into the Disability History Association in 2007. In 2008, the Disability History Association, British Disability History Group, and the San Francisco State University cosponsored an international academic conference for disability history.

Disability History Association Publication Awards

The DHA sponsors the Outstanding Publication Award, awarded annually to a book or an article which explores significant new ground in the field of disability history.[4] From 2012 to 2017, the DHA alternated offering the Outstanding Book Chapter or Article Award and the Outstanding Book Award, but in 2018 began offering both awards each year.

Outstanding Publication Award Winners:[5]

Year Outstanding Book Chapter or Article Award winner Outstanding Book Award winner
2012 2012: David M. Turner. New Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment. (York: Routledge, 2012)
2013 2013: Audra Jennings. “‘An Emblem of Distinction’: The Politics of Disability Entitlement, 1940-1950,” in Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States ed. Stephen R. Ortiz, (University Press of Florida, 2012)
2014 2014: Sebastian Barsch, Anne Klein, and Pieter Verstraete, eds. The Imperfect Historian: Disability Histories in Europe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013).
2015 2015: Dea H. Boster, "'I Made Up My Mind to Act Both Deaf and Dumb': Displays of Disability and Slave Resistance in the Antebellum American South," Disability and Passing: Blurring the Lines of Identity, Jeffrey A. Brune and Daniel J. Wilson, eds. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013), 71-98.
2016 2016: Sara Scalenghe, Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
2017 Laura Micheletti Puaca, “The Largest Occupational Group of All the Disabled: Homemakers with Disabilities and Vocational Rehabilitation in Postwar America,” in Disabling Domesticity, ed. Michael Rembis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 73-102.
2018 Laurel Daen, “Martha Ann Honeywell: Art, Performance, and Disability in the Early Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 37, no.2 (2017): 225-250. Sarah F. Rose, No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

Current Board of Directors, 2019-2020[6]

Sara Scalenghe - Chair

Lindsey Patterson - Vice President

Aparna Nair - VP for Communications

Kathleen Brian - Treasurer

Caroline Lieffers - Graduate Student Representative

Nicole Belolan - Member

Susan Burch - Member

Iain Hutchison - Member

Sandy Sufian - Member

Jaipreet Virdi -Member

References

  1. “About our website,” URL: http://dev.celestesharpe.com/?page_id=2.
  2. Kudlick, Catherine, “Disability History Association”, in Burch, Susan. Encyclopedia of American Disability History. Facts on File Library of American History. New York: Facts On File, 2009: 277.
  3. The earliest discussion we can trace in the H-Disability is a book review posted in March, 2001, which is called “Saunders on The Workhouse” (Citation: Kathy Saunders. Review of, The Workhouse. H-Disability, H-Net Reviews. March, 2001. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15084).
  4. "Publication Awards – The Disability History Association". Retrieved 2019-02-04.
  5. "Publication Awards – The Disability History Association". Retrieved 2019-02-04.
  6. "About the DHA – The Disability History Association". Retrieved 2019-02-22.
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