Author: Caroline Lieffers

Nicholas Hrynyk (University of Toronto) discusses his work on queer and disability history, including his recent article on HIV/AIDS, masculinity, disease, and disability.

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About Our Guest

Nick Hrynyk is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His research interests include queer history, disability studies (past and present), feminist and gender studies, critical race studies, and visual culture. Nick’s current project examines both the structures of discrimination such as social and physical barriers that many gay men and lesbians with disabilities faced, as well as how they used style to navigate their disabilities in relationship to Toronto’s larger queer community between 1969 and 1995. His forthcoming manuscript, Politic-ing the Body is under contract with University of Toronto Press and he is currently working on a second co-authored manuscript titled, Anticipated Violence and the Queer Subject. Finally, Nick serves on the Historical Advisory Committee for the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity and is an affiliated member with the Carleton Centre for Public History at Carleton University and the Windsor-Essex Rainbow Alliance. His website is https://nicholas-hrynyk.com/ and you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-hrynyk-ph-d-923b285b/ .

Ravi Malhotra (University of Ottawa) discusses his new book, co-authored with Benjamin Isitt, about the life and work of American-Canadian socialist radical E.T. Kingsley.

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About Our Guest

Ravi Malhotra is Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. He holds five degrees and is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. He has published several books including his anthologies, Disability Politics in a Global Economy: Essays in Honour of Marta Russell (Routledge) and (with Benjamin Isitt) edited Disabling Barriers: Social Movements, Disability History and the Law (University of British Columbia Press).  Disabled since birth, you can follow him on Twitter @RaviMalh. Information about Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley is available at https://www.ubcpress.ca/able-to-lead, as well as the accompanying website abletolead.ca. You can register for the June 15 book launch at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/book-launch-by-ravi-malhotra-and-benjamin-isitt-tickets-147140131093.

Micah Khater (Yale University) discusses her dissertation on the history of Black women, escape, and Alabama prisons.

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About Our Guest

Micah Khater is an Arab American Ph.D. Candidate in the Departments of African American Studies and History at Yale University. She is currently completing her dissertation, “‘Unable to Find Any Trace of Her’: Black Women, Genealogies of Escape, and Alabama Prisons, 1920 – 1950,” which is a social and cultural history of Black women’s attempts to run away from police, jails, and prisons. In 2020 – 2021, she is a Center for Engaged Scholarship Fellow. In addition to scholarship, Khater’s poetry and prose has appeared in Sukoon and Taos International Journal of Poetry & Art. For more of her work–creative and academic–please visit her website.

Nicole Belolan discusses her work on the material culture of gout in early America, as well as public history, pedagogy, and more! 

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Nicole Belolan, PhD, is the Public Historian in Residence at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University-Camden. At Rutgers, she directs a continuing education program in historic preservation. As part of her appointment, she is also the Co-Editor of The Public Historian and the Digital Media Editor for the National Council on Public History. Nicole is a historian of the material culture of disability in early America. She regularly lectures and gives workshops on disability history and best practices for museums and historic sites, and she is the Secretary of the Disability History Association. Her most recent publication is “The Material Culture of Gout in Early America,” in Elizabeth Guffey and Bess Williamson, eds., Making Disability Modern: Design Histories (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020), 19-42.

Bruce Dierenfield and David Gerber discuss their new book, Disability Rights and Religious Liberty in Education: The Story of Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District.

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About Our Guests

Bruce J. Dierenfield is a professor of history and director of the All-College Honors Program at Canisius College. He has authored numerous articles and books about race relations, civil rights, and religious liberty, including The Battle over School Prayer: How Engel v. Vitale Changed America (2007), which won the David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Legal History or Biography. David A. Gerber is a University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus and director emeritus of the University at Buffalo Center for Disability Studies. He has published numerous essays and books about disability, immigration, and ethnicity. Professor Gerber was honored with the Annual Senior Scholar Award by the Society for Disability Studies in 2015, and he published an accompanying essay, “Disability Scholars as World Disrupters and Worldmakers,” in Disability Studies Quarterly in 2017.