Public Disability History
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Public Disability History is a blog journal and a forum for exchange between the diverse actors involved and invested in issues regarding disability. It's a website to gather and provide resources for the history of disabilities. Furthermore, it offers a "fast track" publication mode for theoretical/methodological reflections with a lower threshold than full scholarly publications.
Public Disability History
5M ago
By Céline Roussel & Marion Chottin
Rediscovering Maurice de la Sizeranne’s Cultural Project
As Marion and I were exploring for our academic research – for CNRS-projects on the one hand, for a doctoral thesis at Paris-Sorbonne on the other – the field of disability studies, with a focus on blindness related to philosophy, literature, and other arts, we made the acquaintance of Noëlle Roy, curator of the museum and library in the Association Valentin Haüy from 2000 to 2017. She led us into a very special room, the “salle Heimann” (“Heimann room”), which houses the great oeuvre of Maurice de ..read more
Public Disability History
8M ago
By Valerie Doulton
Martineau’s Childhood and the Beginnings of Deafness
Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, in Norwich, the principal city of the county of Norfolk, in England. Her family was of Huguenot descent and Unitarian, a type of non-conformist Christianity which Martineau rejected as an adult, eventually becoming an atheist. Early on in her life it was noticed that Martineau was musically gifted. But at twelve years old she began to notice a small but perceptible loss of hearing. By the time she was sixteen this had become considerably more pronounced, causing her considerable p ..read more
Public Disability History
11M ago
By Richard Sison
Over their long history, martial arts have evolved various forms and techniques. A lesser known but significant aspect of this history is martial arts practice for disabled people.
Historically, such adaptations have emerged in various cultures and regions, reflecting that disability and interest in martial arts are worldwide phenomena.
Martial arts enable disabled and non-disabled individuals to physically train, cultivate mental well-being, and foster social connections.
Historical Origins – Ancient China and Japan
Martial arts practices tailored for ..read more
Public Disability History
1y ago
By Emmeline Burdett and Penelope Friday
A few months ago I was reading an article in Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, that told the story of the novelist Jane Austen’s disabled brother George. I’d heard about George before: he featured in the 2007 film Becoming Jane, starring Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen, and the film suggested both that the siblings had a relatively close relationship, and that George was the reason that his sister knew sign language. More darkly, other sources have shown that George was not included in his family tree, as though he had not existed at all. The article i ..read more
Public Disability History
1y ago
– A disabled artist and his self-determined life –
The Object
We [the authors] discovered this miniature self-portrait of Theodorus Steib. It is not just a testament to his painting skills, but also to how he saw himself. His painting skills were truly amazing, and he also managed to capture his experiences as a disabled person in seventeenth-century Austria and Germany.
Self-portrait of Thodorus Steib. Oil on oak wood, dated 1651.
Photo: K.-K., Rhineland-Palatinate, image courtesy of the owners.
The picture shows him deep in concentration, sitting on a red cushion on the floor. His ga ..read more
Public Disability History
1y ago
By Emmeline Burdett
This quotation comes from Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black, one of the short-stories in a collection by the white South African writer Nadine Gordimer, which was published in 2007. It demonstrates how differing interpretations of the past can easily become a politicized battleground. A new chamber opera which looks at disability history through a highly politicized lens demonstrates both the pitfalls and the possibilities of this approach. The Paradis Files was created by Graeae Theatre Company and tells the story of Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824), an Aust ..read more
Public Disability History
2y ago
By Stephanie Evelyn-Wright
In June 2014, I attended a performance of ‘Cabinet of Curiosities: how disability was kept in a box’. This show explored the ways in which disability and disabled people are portrayed in museums (School of Museum Studies 2022). However, the skeletons of actual disabled people were omitted. I asked the show’s performer – the disabled actor Mat Fraser – about this, and he told me that he was interested in disability as a social construct, but not as a ‘medical condition’. Fraser’s attitude is an example of the social model of disability, which holds that it ..read more
Public Disability History
2y ago
By Sebastian Barsch & Joana Hansen
In May 2020, the announcement that a wheelchair-bound character would soon be included in the video game "Marvel's Avengers" went viral. In a way this is surprising because for various media there has been discussion for years about how to better represent social diversity. Even if these discussions have not led to people with disabilities being adequately represented in films, for example. What must be questioned, however, is which actors are chosen to portray people with disabilities. Sophia Stewart aptly writes: "The Oscars Love Movies About Disabilit ..read more
Public Disability History
2y ago
By Gill Crawshaw
George Thompson worked at Gotts Mill, now Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills in Yorkshire, UK, in the 1840s. George’s job was as a handle-setter, putting teasels into metal frames which were fitted onto a teasel-raising gig. This machine was used in the finishing stages of cloth making, there’s an example of one in the Industrial Museum. The cloth would pass over the spines of the teasels in the gig to raise the nap of the fabric. It was then cropped to give it a smooth surface.
The Leeds Industrial Museum at Armley Mills
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia ..read more
Public Disability History
2y ago
By Volker Schönwiese and Angela Wegscheider
As an organiser of self-help groups and a political activist, Siegfried Braun (1893-1944) co-founded the Erste Österreichische Krüppelarbeitsgemeinschaft (First Austrian Cripple Working Group), a disabled people’s organisation oriented towards emancipation and social rights. In 1943, the Nazis deported Braun, identified as an Austrian-Czech Jew, to the Theresienstadt ghetto. He was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
Portrait of Siegfried Braun, Chairman of the Cripple Working Group
Source: Illustrierte Kronen-Zeitung, 17/12/1926, 7
The con ..read more