Undergraduate Course: Transatlantic Disability Histories, c. 1700-1990 (HIST10536)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course provides an introduction to the field of Disability History and will explore how cognitive and physical difference have been understood and constructed in Europe and the Americas from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. We will examine how disability intersected with systems of labour, care, race, gender, colonial power and transatlantic exchange, and how disabled people have navigated and resisted these structures. |
| Course description |
This course will introduce students to histories of disability and disabled people across the Atlantic World, tracing how cognitive and bodily difference have been understood, experienced, and constructed in different cultural and historical settings. With particular emphasis on the movement of ideas, institutions, and people between Europe and the Americas, we will explore how concepts of dis/ability and impairment were shaped by enslavement, colonialism, industrialisation, war, and the growth of global capitalism. We will consider the role of changing labour environments and care structures in the development of 'disability' as an identity category in western society since the eighteenth century, as well as the interplay between race, class, gender and disability in the nineteenth-century 'medical model', the eugenics movement and the twentieth-century disability rights campaigns. The course ends in 1990, with the passing of the 'Americans
with Disabilities Act' in the United States, the 'Community Care Act' in the United Kingdom, and the early emergence of Disability Studies as a field, allowing students to reflect on the long-term legacies of disability histories.
By centring disabled people's lives and agency, this course will encourage students to think critically about categories of difference, capacity, and perceived normality in different time periods. Students will engage with a diverse array of sources - including letters, personal narratives, legal codes, institutional records, medical texts and material culture - and become familiar with the varied methodological approaches used by disability historians to recover the lives and experiences of disabled people from the archive.
The study of History inevitably involves the study of difficult topics that we encourage students to approach in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Nevertheless, we remain conscious that some students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics. In particular, the course organiser has outlined that the following topics may be discussed in this course, whether in class or through required or recommended primary and secondary sources: ableism, racism, colonialism, eugenics, misogyny, institutionalisation. While this list indicates sensitive topics students are likely to encounter, it is not exhaustive because course organisers cannot entirely predict the directions discussions may take in tutorials or seminars, or through the wider reading that students may conduct for the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. Applicants should note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission.
** as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Non written skills«br /»
Seminar Participation (10%)«br /»
Seminar Presentation (10%)«br /»
«br /»
Coursework«br /»
1,500 word Literature Review Essay (30%)«br /»
3,000 word Final Essay (50%) |
| Feedback |
Students will receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser during their published office hours for this course or by appointment |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- ddemonstrate an understanding of disability as a historical identity category and the ways cognitive and physical difference have been understood and constructed in Europe and the Americas from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries
- read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship in disability history and adjacent fields
- understand, evaluate and utilise a variety of primary source material
- develop and sustain scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence
- demonstrate independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers
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Reading List
Michael Rembis, Catherine J. Kudlick, and Kim Nielsen, The Oxford Handbook of Disability History (Oxford: University Press, 2018).
Catherine J. Kudlick, 'Disability History: Why We Need Another 'Other'', American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (June 2003), pp. 763-93.
Tom Shakespeare, 'The Social Model of Disability,' in The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 266-73.
Anna Hinton, 'On Fits, Starts, and Entry Points: The Rise of Black Disability Studies', CLA Journal 64, no. 1 (2021), pp. 11-29.
Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2020).
David M. Turner and Daniel Blackie, Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British Coalmining, 1780-1880 (Manchester University Press, 2018).
Esme Cleall, Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and Its Empire, c. 1800-1914, Critical Perspectives on Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Anne Borsay, Disability and Social Policy in Britain Since 1750: A History of Exclusion (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
Lennard Davis, Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015).
Fred Pelka, What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012).
Peter Bartlett and David Wright, Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750-2000 (London: Athlone, 1999) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and Enquiry - Students will develop skills in reading, searching for, organising and analysing a wide variety of primary and secondary sources related to disability history
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy - Students will develop their skills in evaluating historical sources and arguments and incorporating them into their broader understanding of topics in disability history.
Outlook and Engagement - Students will be able to reflect on continuities or change over time and apply a disability lens to wider American and European histories and
contemporary issues.
Communication -Students will build their experience in coherent and effective written and oral communication through their engagement in seminars and multiple forms of assessment, with appropriate feedback from the Course Organiser.
Enquiry and lifelong learning - Students will engage with the perspectives and experiences of groups that have been marginalised in many historical times and places and
be given opportunities to reflect upon the legacies of these histories in the contemporary world. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Diana Paton
Tel: (0131 6)50 4578
Email: Diana.Paton@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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