Beyond impairment: Recent histories of early American disability

Abstract

Research on physical and intellectual incapacity in early America (defined in this essay as North America and the Caribbean before 1820) dates at least to the 1930s, but only in the past decade or so have historians focused on disability, spawning the burgeoning subfield of early American disability history. Inspired by disability rights activism and the discipline of disability studies, scholars in the field approach disability as a historically variable and ever‐nuanced category akin to gender, race, and class. Departing from earlier scholarship that viewed impairment as a health condition best resolved by social welfare and medicine, recent works meld analysis of the concept of disability and its influence on structures of power with a commitment to recovering the lives and experiences of impaired people. This essay examines two areas of new research in the field of early American disability history: (a) disability in law and government and (b) disability and slavery. The essay also discusses recent works that have pushed the theoretical bounds of the field, using analytical strategies that blend past and present, foreground language, and question the concept of disability itself.