Websightings: Childhood and Disability History

Moira Hinderer, University of Chicago

General

Some useful starting points for historians seeking information about child and disability on the web include: H-Disability, which hosts discussions of a wide range of scholarly issues of "disability" (at http://www.h-net.org/~disabil/ ).  Many academic programs in disability studies also host their own sites, for example the Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies at Syracuse University (at http://disabilitystudies.syr.edu/ ).  The resources section of the site offers extensive bibliographies as well as web site listings and descriptions of academic programs. Information on scholarly issues can also be found at sites like the Society for Disability Studies (at http://www.uic.edu/orgs/sds/index.html ). DisabilityResources.org (at http://www.disabilityresources.org/index.html ) contains an overwhelming number of topics, links and resources for a broad audience.  However, historians may find the links in the section "Art, History and Culture" both manageable and useful.  Government publications and documents related to Americans with Disabilities Act can be found (at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm ). 

Exhibits

While not specifically focused on children, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History online exhibit Whatever Happened to Polio (at http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/ ) includes many child subjects and child-related artifacts.  The exhibit also includes a section called "Understanding Historical Photographs," which could provide an interesting starting point for classroom discussions about visual images and constructions of childhood and disability.  The Smithsonian also hosts the online exhibit The Disability Rights Movement ( at http://americanhistory.si.edu/disabilityrights/exhibit.html )While this exhibit provides an overview of  issues in disability rights, it lacks some of the richness of the Polio exhibit.

The four hour documentary radio series Beyond Affliction: The Disability History Project (at http://www.npr.org/programs/disability/ ) originally aired on National Public Radio. Children and families are a prominent part of the series, particularly in the programs "Inventing the Poster Child" and "Tomorrow's Children." The Beyond Affliction site includes audio and written transcript excerpts from the shows as well as reproductions of many of the documents discussed on the shows.  Information about ordering tapes and transcripts of the programs are also available on the site

The Disability Social History Project (at http://www.disabilityhistory.org/index.html ) provides extensive links and bibliographies relating to both popular and scholarly perspectives on disability.  Of particular interest are the site's web exhibits on topics including "Freak Shows" in the United States (1940-1940), Disability Campaigns in the United States: 1930s - 1960s, Disability Militancy in the 1930s, Nazis, Eugenics, and the T-4 Program (1920-1950).  While these exhibits are generally small, they raise interesting issues and are usually accompanied by extensive bibliographies.

Primary Sources and Images

While the Disability History Museum (at http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/ ) does not yet have any exhibits on their website, they do have a interesting library containing both a "Document Collection" and a "Visual Still Collection."  These items primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries include photographs, postcards, advertisements, lithographs, beggar's cards, articles, pamphlets, and book excerpts. 

The site neurodiversity.com (at http://www.neurodiversity.com/ ) states that its mission is "honoring the variety of human wiring."  The site includes a blog that advocates on various medical issues as well as an extensive library of podcasts and full-text articles. One collection of articles called the "Library of the History of Autism Research, Behaviorism and Psychiatry" includes a collection of articles published between 1943 and 1978 in both scholarly journals and popular magazines.  The site provides easy access to articles like a 1965 Life Magazine piece on autistic children called, "Screams, Slaps, and Love: A Surprising, Shocking Treatment Helps Far-Gone Mental Cripples," which is reproduced with the original photographs.

The extensive digitized holdings of American Memory at the Library of Congress (at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html ) offers a large searchable database of visual and written texts.  There holdings seem particularly strong in the institutional history of childhood and disability, with many documents from schools, institutions, and charities.