Syllabus and Schedule of Activities

2024 Summer Seminar in Historic American Visual Culture

Disability Histories in the Visual Archive: Redress, Protest, and Justice

Sunday June 9: Arrival

  •  4:00-5:00 Introductions and Overview (Antiquarian Hall)
  •  5:00-6:00 Tour of Library (with AAS President Scott Casper)
  •  6:00-7:30 Reception with Dinner (Goddard-Daniels House)

Monday June 10:

  • 9:00-10:00 Library Registration and Participant Introductions (bring 2 forms of ID) (Learning Lab)

    View: “Searching the AAS General Catalog” (YouTube)

    Please watch the following sections:

    1. Five Things to Know about the AAS Catalog

    2. Anatomy of a Catalog Record

    3. Finding Digital Surrogates

    4. MARC View

    5. Wildcard Searches

  •  10:00-10:30 Break (GDH)

  •  10:30-12:00 Lecture and Discussion: Methodologies: Disability Studies, Visual Culture Studies, and Vast Early America (Laurel Daen and Jennifer Van Horn) (LL)

    Readings: 

    1. Karin Wulf, “Vast Early America,” Humanities (2019) 

    2. Nicole Belolan, “Disability History,” Inclusive Historian’s Handbook (2024)

    3. Katherine Ott, “Disability Things: Material Culture and American Disability History, 1700-2010,” in Disability Histories (2014) (Google folder) 

    4. Sins Invalid, “Ten Principles of Disability Justice” (2015)

    5. Optional: To further develop your skills in visual and material culture analysis, see the “Visual and Material Culture Methodologies” section in our Crowd-Sourced Reading List.

     

  • 12:00 -12:30 Meet the Curators (LL)
  • 12:30 -1:30 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:30 -3:00 Hands-on Workshop: Methodologies: Disability Studies, Visual Culture Studies, and Vast Early America (Laurel Daen and Jennifer Van Horn) (LL)
  •  3:00 - 3:30 Break (GDH)

  •  3:30 - 4:45 Discussion and Workshop: Critical Archival Studies, Critical Curating, and Disability Studies (Laurel Daen and Jennifer Van Horn) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Gracen Brilmyer, “They Weren’t Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in Mind,” Archivaria (2022), 120-153. (Google folder) 

    2. Amanda Cachia, “Disability, Curating, and the Educational Turn: The Contemporary Condition of Access in the Museum,” Critical Curating 24 (2014).

 

Tuesday June 11:

  • 9:00-10:30 Virtual Guest Lecture and Discussion: Indigenous Disability Histories (Susan Burch) (LL)

    Readings: 

    1. Christine DeLucia, “Antiquarian Collecting and the Transits of Indigenous Material Culture: Rethinking ‘Indian Relics’ and Tribal Histories,” Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life (2017)

    2. Susan Burch, “Between and Across Institutions: Multiple Removals, Settler Colonialism, and Histories of the West,” The Western Historical Quarterly (2023) (Google folder)

  • 10:30-11:00 Break (GDH)

  • 11:00-12:30 Guest Lecture and Discussion: The Paradox of Visibility in American Slavery (Jenifer Barclay) (LL)

    Reading:

    1. Jenifer L. Barclay, “Mothering the ‘Useless’: Black Motherhood, Disability, and Slavery,” in Women, Gender, and Families of Color (2014) (Google folder)

  • 12:30-1:30 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:30-3:00 Hands-on Workshop: The Paradox of Visibility in American Slavery (Jenifer Barclay) (LL)
  • 3:00-3:30 Break (GDH)

  • 3:30-4:45 Historical Printmaking and Photographic Techniques (Lauren Hewes and Christine Morris) (LL)

     

Wednesday June 12:

  • 9:00-11:00 Research for Student Presentations; Time for Individual Consultations (Reading Room)
  • 11:00 Gather outside library for bus to Boston
  • 12:30 -1:00 Lunch at Boston Athenaeum

  • 1:00 - 4:00 Field Trip at Boston Athenaeum

    Activities:

    1, Exhibition: Framing Freedom: The Harriet Hayden Albums

    2, Special Collections Materials

    3, Chat with the Curators

    Readings: 

    1. Harriet Hayden Albums Digital Entry (Boston Athenaeum)

    2. Optional: Jasmine Cobb, “Optics of Respectability: Women, Vision, and the Black Private Sphere,” in Picture Freedom (2015), 66-110 (Google folder)

  • 4:30 Return bus to Worcester

 

Thursday June 13:

  • 9:00-10:00 Review and Reading Discussion: Freakery, Performance, and Ethical Looking (Laurel Daen and Jennifer Van Horn) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Riva Lehrer, Selection from Golem Girl (2020), 240-253 (Google folder)

    2. Petra Kuppers, “Performance,” Keywords for Disability Studies (Google folder)

    3. Optional: Sharrona Pearl, “Victorian Blockbuster Bodies and the Freakish Pleasure of Looking,” Nineteenth-Century Contexts (2016) (Google folder)

  • 10:00-10:30 Break (GDH)

  • 10:30-12:00 Lecture and Discussion: The Human Face of War: Visualizing Disabled Civil War Soldiers and Veterans in the Archive (Erin Corrales-Diaz) (LL)

    Readings:

    1. Brian Matthew Jordan, “Veterans in New Fields: Directions for Future Scholarship on Civil War Veterans” in The War Went On (2020) (Google folder) 

    2. Megan Kate Nelson, “Looking for Limbs in all the Right places: Retrieving the Civil War’s Broken Bodies,” Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life (2011)

  • 12:00-12:30 Overview of AAS Fellowship Program (Nan Wolverton) (LL)
  • 12:30 -1:30 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:30-3:00 Hands-on Workshop: The Human Face of War: Visualizing Disabled Civil War Soldiers and Veterans in the Archive (Erin Corrales-Diaz) (LL)
  • 3:00-3:30 Break (GDH)

  • 3:30-4:45 Research for Student Presentations; Time for Individual Consultations (Reading Room)

    Students send 1-2 PowerPoint slides to instructors for Friday presentations

  • 6:00 Pizza at the Goddard Daniels House

 

Friday June 14:

  • 9:00-10:00 Concluding Discussion: Disability Histories in the Visual Archive (Laurel Daen and Jennifer Van Horn) (LL)
  • 10:00-10:30 Break (GDH)
  • 10:30-12:00 Student Presentations (LL)
  • 12:00-1:00 Lunch (GDH)
  • 1:00-2:30 Student Presentations (LL)

  • 2:30 Departures or additional time in the Reading Room