Colleagues:
I have been informed that _The New Disability History: American
Perspectives_, edited by Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, will be
published within the next couple of weeks. A description of its contents
and ordering information appear below.
Paul Longmore
General Interest / Pub. 12/1/2000 / 432 pages
ISBN: 0814785638 / $65.00 cloth
ISBN: 0814785646 / $23.95 paper
Disability has always been a preoccupation of American society and
culture. From antebellum debates about qualification for citizenship to
current controversies over access and reasonable accommodations,
disability has been present, in penumbra if not in print, on virtually
every page of American history. Yet historians have only recently begun
the deep excavation necessary to retrieve lives shrouded in religious,
then medical, and always deep-seated cultural, misunderstanding. This
volume opens up disability's hidden history. In these pages, a North
Carolina youth finds his identity as a deaf Southerner challenged in Civil
War-era New York. Deaf community leaders ardently defend sign language in
early 20th century America. The mythic Helen Keller and the
long-forgotten American Blind People's Higher Education and General
Improvement Association each struggle to shape public and private roles
for blind Americans. White and black disabled World War I and II veterans
contest public policies and cultural values to claim their citizenship
rights. Neurasthenic Alice James and injured turn-of-the-century
railroadmen grapple with the interplay of disability and gender.
Progressive-era rehabilitationists fashion programs to make crippled
children economically productive and socially valid, and two
Depression-era fathers murder their sons as public opinion blames the
boys' mothers for having cherished the lads' lives. These and many other
figures lead readers through hospital-schools, courtrooms, advocacy
journals, and beyond to discover disability's past.
Coupling empirical evidence with the interdisciplinary tools and insights
of disability studies, the book explores the complex meanings of
disability as identity and cultural signifier in American history.
Author of _The Invention of George Washington_, Paul K. Longmore is
Professor of History and Director of the Institute on Disability at San
Francisco State University. Associate Professor of History at Suffolk
University, Lauri Umansky is the author of _Motherhood Reconceived_ and
co-editor, with Molly Ladd Taylor, of _"Bad" Mothers: The Politics of
Blame in TwentiethCentury America_.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, "Disability History: From the Margins
to the Mainstream"
Part I: Uses and Contests
Douglas C. Baynton, "Disability and the Justification of Inequality in
American History"
R. A. R. Edwards, "'Speech Has An Extraordinary Humanizing Power': Horace
Mann and the Problem of Nineteenth-Century American Deaf Education"
Hannah Joyner, "'This Unnatural and Fratricidal Strife': A Family's
Negotiation of the Civil War, Deafness, and Independence"
Natalie A. Dykstra, "'Trying to Idle': Work and Disability in The Diary of
Alice James"
Part II: Redefinitions and Resistance
Brad Byrom, "A Pupil and A Patient: Hospital-Schools in Progressive
America"
John Williams-Searle, "Cold Charity: Manhood, Brotherhood, and the
Transformation of Disability, 1870-1900"
Catherine J. Kudlick, "The Outlook of The Problem and the Problem with The
Outlook: Two Advocacy Journals Reinvent Blind People in Turn-of-the-
Century America"
Susan Burch, "Reading Between the Signs: Defending Deaf Culture in Early
Twentieth Century America"
K. Walter Hickel, "Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare: The Politics
of Disability Compensation for American Veterans of World War I"
Kim Nielsen, "Helen Keller and the Politics of Civic Fitness"
Part III: Images and Identities
Janice A. Brockley, "Martyred Mothers and Merciful Fathers: Exploring
Disability and Motherhood in the Lives of Jerome Greenfield and Raymond
Repouille"
David A. Gerber, "Blind and Enlightened: The Contested Origins of the
Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association"
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, "Seeing the Disabled: Visual Representations of
Disabled People in Modern American Popular Culture"
Richard K. Scotch, "Conceptions of Disability Policy in Twentieth Century
America."
New York University Press
838 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10003-4812
tel (212) 998-2575
fax (212) 995-3833
e-mail inquiries: [log in to unmask]
Orders and Customer Service
New York University Press
838 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10003-4812
tel 1-800-996-6987
fax (212) 995-3833
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