Conference Schedule

Disability in the Vast Early Americas

Conference Schedule

Friday, Oct. 20

7-8:30 a.m.
Breakfast
Outside of 215/216 McKenna Hall
A continental breakfast will be provided for all participants.

8:30-9 a.m.
Introductory remarks
Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, University of New Brunswick
Laurel Daen, University of Notre Dame

9-10:30 a.m.

Panel Sessions

Panel 1: Settler Colonialism and Theories of the Mind
215 McKenna Hall

Chair: Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, University of New Brunswick

Ittai Orr, University of Michigan — The Good Mind and the Bad Mind: Haudenosaunee Origin Stories as Anti-ableist Cognitive Science

Ashley M. Williard, University of South Carolina — Mad White Exile: Policing and Contesting French Atlantic Manhood

Rebecca Rose Farias, independent scholar — “Doe as Thou Wouldest be Done By”: Relief Responses to Mental Illness in Puritan
New England

Panel 2: Gender and Disability in Early America
216 McKenna Hall

Chair: Sari Altschuler, Northeastern University

Meg Roberts, University of Cambridge — “For Want of Good Nurses”: Gendered Care Labor and Disability in the American Continental Army, 1776-1779

Casey Green, Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts — The Lane Less Traveled: Disability and Intergenerational Conflict at the Turn of the 19th Century

Jennifer W. Reiss, University of Pennsylvania — “For Her Protection”: Disability and Gender in Early Modern Anglo-American Law

10:30-11:15 a.m.

Coffee and Refreshments
Outside of 215/216 McKenna Hall

11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

Panel Sessions

Panel 3: Slavery and Antislavery in the Atlantic World
215 McKenna Hall

Chair: Jenifer L. Barclay, University of Buffalo

Chris J. Gismondi, University of New Brunswick — Sullen, Alarmed, Vexed: Reading the Psyche and Mental Health in British and British North American Fugitive Slave Advertisements

Dea Boster, Columbus State Community College — “I Could Not Move Without the Greatest Pain”: Ableism, Chronic Pain, and Negotiation in the History of Mary Prince

Esme Cleall, University of Sheffield — Living, Promoting and Opposing Enslavement: Six Disabled People in Britain and the Caribbean, c. 1750-1840

Panel 4: Biography and Representation
216 McKenna Hall

Chair: Kim E. Nielsen, University of Toledo

Chris Mounsey, University of Winchester — Nicholas Saunderson and the Elements of Algebra: Spreading Newtonian Mathematics across the World

A. Nicholas Powers, Museum of the Shenandoah Valley — Art, Disability, and Enslavement: The World of Edward Caledon Bruce (1825–1900)

Natasha Tiniacos, City University of New York — The Re-education of the Left: The Hand of Cándido López

12:45-2:30 p.m.

Working Lunch
205/206/207 McKenna Hall

Lunch will be provided for all in-person participants. We invite you to join a working group to connect with other scholars in your field or with shared interests. (Details will be announced.)

2:30-4 p.m.

Panel Sessions

Panel 5: Abolition, Emancipation, and Power
215 McKenna Hall

Chair: Cristobal Silva, University of California, Los Angeles

Jerrad Preston Pacatte, Rutgers University–New Brunswick — “Her frame bending under the oppression of years”: Disability, Emancipation, and Power in Early America

Mia Edwards, University of Warwick — Representations of Masculinity, Physicality, and Physical Disability within Abolitionist Texts and Materials

Nate Kogan, Rowland Hall — “The Strange Career of Benjamin Lay”: The Nineteenth-Century Afterlife of a Disabled Abolitionist Icon

Panel 6: Military Histories of Disability
216 McKenna Hall

Chair: Geoffrey L. Hudson, Northern Ontario School of Medicine

Francisco A. Eissa-Barroso, University of Manchester — Alberto Bertodano and the Experience of Disabled Spanish Men in the
Atlantic World between the 17th and 18th Centuries

Benjamin H. Irvin, Indiana University — “Only a Toe or a Finger”: Impaired Veterans and the Valuation of Disability
after the Revolutionary War

Jeffrey A. Brune, Gallaudet University — The Establishment of a Welfare Equilibrium in the Early Republic

5:30-7:30 p.m.

Dinner
Rohr’s Bistro, Morris Inn (provided for all in-person participants)

Saturday, Oct. 21

7-8:30 a.m.
Breakfast
Outside of 215/216 McKenna Hall
A continental breakfast will be provided for all in-person participants. Students from Access-ABLE, Notre Dame’s disability student advocacy group, will join.

9-10:30 a.m.

Panel Sessions

Panel 7: Disability, Labor, and Productivity
215 McKenna Hall

Chair: Laurel Daen, University of Notre Dame

Meghan Self, Texas Tech University — Disability, Public Health, and Labor Power in Colonial America

Wulfstan Scouller, Yale University — "A power perfectly unknown to ye laws of England”: Disability and Conservatorship in the Anglo-Atlantic, 1660 – 1820

Ben Mutschler, Oregon State University — Mary Heath's Last Dance: An Invalid Woman and the Problem of Improvement
in Early 19th-Century New England

Panel 8: Disability and Transatlantic Exchange
216 McKenna Hall

Chair: James Moran, University of Prince Edward Island

David M. Turner, Swansea University — James Wilson’s Biography of the Blind (1821) and the Transatlantic Origins of Disability History

Molly Nebiolo, Butler University — Seeking Health: Illness, Movement, and Medical Networks in the Anglo-Atlantic

Megan Whirley, University of Illinois-Chicago — By Land or Sea: Disability in Maritime Communities

10:30-11:15 a.m.
Coffee and Refreshments
215/216 McKenna Hall

11:15 a.m.-12:45 p.m.

Panel Sessions

Panel 9: Madness and Institutionalization in the 19th-Century U.S.
215 McKenna Hall

Chair: Michael Rembis, University of Buffalo

Mark Lee, Crandall University — Pathological Piety: Lay and Medical Perceptions of Religious Madness in
Early 19th-Century America

Chayyim Holtkamp, College of Charleston and The Citadel — Resistance in a Mental Institution: The South Carolina Lunatic Asylum as a Site of Patient Agency

Rabia Belt, Stanford University — The Hidden History of the American M’Naghten

Panel 10: Age and Disability Histories
216 McKenna Hall

Chair: Cornelia H. Dayton, University of Connecticut

Daniel Livesay, Claremont McKenna College — Elderly Resilience in the Atlantic Slave Trade

Maggie (Happe) Vanderford, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan — Recovering the Sensorium of Marginal Disability in Vine Utley's Manuscript Observations (1809-1827)

Rebecca Brannon, James Madison University — Is Old Age Inextricable from Disability? A View from the 18th Century and Toda

12:45-2:30 p.m.
Working Lunch
205/206/207 McKenna Hall

Lunch will be provided for all in-person participants. We invite you to join a working group to connect with other scholars in your field or with shared interests. (Details will be announced.)

2:30-4 p.m.: Panel Sessions

Panel 11: Disability, Material, and Visual Cultures in Early America
215 McKenna Hall

Chair: Nicole Belolan, independent public historian

Kristen Nassif, The Walters Art Museum — Cutting In/Through Disability: A Silhouette of Laura Bridgman

Natalie Wright, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Jennifer Van Horn, University of Delaware — Disability and Creativity: David Drake’s Vessels and the Art of Collaborative Craft

Julia B. Rosenbaum, Bard College — Wounds of War: Medicalizing the Body and Mid-19th-Century Notions of Corporeal Ability

Panel 12: Disability Politics, Past and Present
216 McKenna Hall

Chair: Susan Burch, Middlebury College

James Gray, University of Edinburgh — Blind, Bald, and Crippled: The Rhetoric of Disability in the Election of 1800

Andrew Erlandson, Pennsylvania State University — Blind Authors Writing the Democratic Institution

Nicole Lee Schroeder, Kean University — Disability History for Liberation: Graduate Training, Ethics, and Emancipatory Research

4-5:30 p.m.: Reception
215/216 McKenna Hall

In-person participants are invited to a social gathering with small plates and non-alcoholic drinks. A virtual reception will be held via the 215 McKenna Zoom link

Two Zoom links, one for all events in 215 McKenna and one for all events in 216 McKenna, will be emailed to those who registered as virtual attendees.

A quiet rest space for conference participants will be available in 204 McKenna Hall for the duration of the conference.