This proposed roundtable presents several new, innovative projects in the public history of institutionalization. Participants come from across disciplines including History, Media Studies, Library and Information Science, American Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. We will highlight the importance and complexity of collaboration–with disabled activists and community members, undergraduates, other scholars, and even corporations–in bringing hidden histories to light. Caitlin Angelone will highlight the newly opened archive at Elwyn, an active service organization wrestling with preserving both its own dark history and its modern reputation. Brenda Brueggemann will present on three years of work with UConn undergraduates to preserve and interpret the archives and history of the Mansfield Training School. Ashten Vassar-Cain and Jess Petrazzuoli-Gallagher will share their current efforts to expand access to materials from Speaking For Ourselves, one of the nation’s first self-advocacy organizations, as part of a community-controlled digitization project. Finally, Heather Cassano and Chelsea Chamberlain (also Chair), will discuss the Institution Cemetery Project, an in-progress website that maps the locations and memorialization statuses of institution cemeteries across the United States. Taken together, we hope that presenters and audience members will have a productive discussion about collaboration in public history, the ethical challenges posed by institutional records, the limits of medicalized sources and narratives, and how efforts to preserve and share disability histories can promote justice in the present.
Chair email:
[email protected]Learning Outcomes- Acquire a historically nuanced understanding of the organization of the U.S. healthcare system, and of other national health care systems
- Develop the capacity for critical thinking about the nature, ends and limits of medicine
