Disability in the Vast Early Americas

This interdisciplinary conference explores the experiences, representations, concepts, and categories of disability among diverse peoples in the Americas from the pre-Columbian era to approximately 1850. Our scope is “vast” — chronologically, geographically, and topically — with papers that investigate disability and slavery, indigeneity, colonization, religion, material culture, and the family, among other topics, in North America, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

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Organized by Laurel Daen (University of Notre Dame) and Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy (University of New Brunswick). Sponsored by the Notre Dame College of Arts & Letters’ Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.

Image description: A Black man in a sailor’s uniform leans on a crutch and a cane. On top of his head is a hat featuring a large model ship.