HIST 3307 Blog for Spring 2013

Read:

1) Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States, pp. 100-102 (first section of chapter 6), 110-124 (section in ch. 6 entitled “Institutions and the Reproduction of the American Ideal)” [for background]

2) Martin Pernick, “Defining the Defective: Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Mass Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century America,” in The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability, ed. David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 89-110 (Blackboard)

3) R. D. K. Hermann, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Leprosy, Race, and Colonization in Hawai’I,” Journal of Historical Geography 27, no. 3 (July 2001):  319-337 (Blackboard)

Choose one of these questions to answer:

1) Drawing on at least two of the readings for today, discuss whether the eugenics movement is over. Are the ideas discussed in these readings still around today?  Why or why not?

2) Alternatively, you can summarize in several sentences (or possibly a short paragraph each) your “muddiest point(s)” in at least two readings.

Take-home midterm due on Blackboard by 11 am.  No reading or reading response due today, but we will have class.

Read:

1) In The New Disability History: Douglas C. Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” pp. 33-57

2) Douglas C. Baynton, “‘The Undesirability of Admitting Deaf Mutes’: American Immigration Policy and Deaf Immigrants, 1882-1924,” Sign Language Studies 6, no. 4 (Summer 2006): pp. 391-415 (Blackboard)

3) Examples of “ugly laws” from Susan M. Schweik, The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public (New York University Press, 2009), pp. 201-206 (Blackboard)

Choose one of the following questions to answer:

1) How has disability been used to define what makes a “good citizen?” Your answer should draw on at least two (preferably three) of the readings.

2) Alternatively, you can summarize in several sentences (or possibly a short paragraph each) your “muddiest point(s)” in the two pieces by Baynton.

Read:

1) Jennifer Davis McDaid, “‘How a One-Legged Rebel Lives’: Confederate Veterans and Artificial Limbs in Virginia,” in Katherine Ott, David Serlin, and Stephen Mihm, eds., Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics in America (NYU Press, 2002), pp. 119-143 (Blackboard)

2) Douglas C. Baynton, “‘A Silent Exile on this Earth’: The Metaphorical Construction of Deafness in the Nineteenth Century,” American Quarterly 44, no. 2 (June 1992): pp. 216-243 (Blackboard)

3) Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States, p. 78-87 (first section of ch. 5)
Chose one of these questions to answer:

1) Drawing on at least two of McDaid, Baynton, and Nielsen, how do you think the cultural meaning(s) of disability changed in the wake of the Civil War?

2) Alternatively, you can summarize in several sentences (or possibly a short paragraph each) your “muddiest point(s)” in at least two of McDaid, Baynton, and Nielsen.

Read:

1) Freeberg, The Education of Laura Bridgman, ch. 10-11 and “Legacy”

2) James E.  Moran, “Asylum in the Community: Managing the Insane in Antebellum America,” History of Psychiatry (1998): 217-240 (Blackboard)

3) Elizabeth Packard documents (Blackboard) [I couldn't get access the document I wanted, but hope to bring it to class on Tuesday.  Sorry!]

Please answer one of the following questions:

1) Overall, were nineteenth-century asylums benevolent? Why or why not?  Support your answer with evidence from Freeberg and Moran.

2) What is the legacy (or legacies) of nineteenth-century asylums for ideas about disability and/or people with disabilities?  How important were asylums, and in what ways?  Support your answer with evidence from Freeberg and Moran.

2) Alternatively, you can summarize in several sentences (or possibly a short paragraph each) your “muddiest point(s)” in Freeberg and Moran.

Read:

Read:

1) Freeberg, The Education of Laura Bridgman, introduction and ch. 1-2 (pp. 1-48)

2) Excerpt from Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts, January 1, 1843 (Blackboard)

3) Samuel Gridley Howe, “A Selection from Report Made to the Legislature of Massachusetts Upon Idiocy (1848)” from Mental Retardation in America, pp. 23-26 (Blackboard)

Please answer one of the following questions:

1) Drawing on Freeberg and at least one of the primary source readings (Dix and Howe), how would you characterize the goals of asylum founders such as Samuel Gridley Howe and Dorothea Dix?  How did asylum founders view of people with cognitive and psychological disabilities or those who were blind or deaf?

2) Alternatively, you can summarize in several sentences (or possibly a short paragraph each) your “muddiest point”  for both readings. Muddiest points should engage with major themes in the readings.  If your muddiest point focuses on what might seem to be a minor point, explain why it is a key issue for this topic in disability history.