From the works of deaf architect Adolf Loos to the psychiatric record of U.S. civil war veteran, Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy and Jenifer Barclay have been coordinating a team of authors exploring a wide range of topics in disability history.
The pair are editors of Cripping The Archive, Disability, History, and Power. The spoke with People First Radio
“To crip the archive means to centre disabled people in the histories that we tell,” Hunt-Kennedy said. “To acknowledge that disabled people are sources of knowledge and to find creative methodologies to uncover their histories in archives, that by and large, erase, silence, obscure disabled people and their lived experiences in the histories that we study and the histories that we write.”
Hunt-Kennedy says she hopes the collection can lead historians to be more conscious of disability in the course of their work
“Historians are so familiar with the triad of gender, class, and race, but disability is often treated by historians as some kind of like abnormal human experience, that it’s like exceptional and therefore they don’t do that kind of work,” she said.
“But disability is a universal human experience. We say in the book, disability does not discriminate, right? Most of us will have experiences with disability If we’re fortunate enough to live long enough lives.”
In the introduction to the book, there’s a quotation from disability historian William Loren Katz
“ If you believe people have no history worth mentioning, it’s easy to believe they have no humanity worth defending,” it reads.
Barclay says the editors really wanted to drive home that point with the project.
“By reckoning with disability in the archives, it is an issue of representation, but… it impacts people today, and it impacts the way that we all sort of see and think about the world around us.”
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