Leah Richier discusses her work on mental hospitals in the US South.
EpisodeImage: Patient ledger from South Carolina State Hospital. Photograph of the spine of a decaying nineteenth-century ledger book. The book is sitting on a table, with a chair back and window visible in the background. Typed archival labels on the book’s spine read “SC State Hospital: Admissions and Discharges, 1860-1875, vol. 1” and “Also includes: List of Patients, 1860, 1863-1866, 1868-1869, List of Admissions 1876-1878.” Photo courtesy of Leah Richier.
Leah Richier is an independent historian with a PhD from the University of Georgia and a BA from Agnes Scott College. She has taught history courses on a wide variety of subjects at the University of Georgia, Washington & Lee University, and the University of North Florida. For two years during the pandemic, she taught high school in Houston, Texas at Awty International. Her research focuses on the lives and deaths of disabled people during the nineteenth century, especially across the U.S. South. She also works constructing digital databases of murder-suicides and lunatic asylum patients in the same century. She can be reached at richierleah@gmail.com and found on Twitter @CallMeRichier.
Jim Odato discusses his new book on disability activist and Mouth editor Lucy Gwin.
Episode Image: This Brain Had a Mouth: Lucy Gwin and the Voice of Disability Nation, by James M. Odato. The cover shows a black-and-white portrait of Lucy Gwin sitting by a computer. She is a white woman with short dark hair, wearing a dark shirt.
James Odato is a graduate of University of Massachusetts Amherst and has a master’s degree in English from University at Albany. He is currently the editor of the Adirondack Explorer. Prior to this role, he was an investigative reporter at the Albany Times Union for eighteen years, and he previously worked with the Buffalo News, Schenectady Gazette, the Gannett Co., and the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. He has also taught journalism as an adjunct professor at the University at Albany, The College of Saint Rose and the Sage Colleges. He can be reached at jim@adirondackexplorer.org.
Chelsea Chamberlain discusses her research on the history of Pennsylvania’s Elwyn School.
Episode Image: Black and white engraving of Elwyn School. The image shows a large four-storey building with several wings, sitting on manicured grounds. Several people walk on paths in front of the building. The engraving is labelled “Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children.” Source: Free Library of Pennsylvania (https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/44367)
Chelsea D. Chamberlain is a PhD Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. She has a MA from the University of Montana and is on the advisory board of the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance.
Susan Burch discusses her new book on the individuals, families, and communities who were affected by Canton Asylum.
Episode Image: Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions, by Susan Burch. The cover shows an image of a quilt with colourful circles on a white field. Each circle features different patterned fabrics radiating out from a round blue center.
Susan Burch is a professor of American studies and a former director of the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Middlebury College. Her research and teaching interests focus on histories of deaf, disability, Mad, race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, and gender and sexuality. Material culture, oral history, and inclusive design play an important role in her courses. Burch is the author of Signs of Resistance: American Deaf Cultural History, 1900 to 1942 (2002) and a coauthor, with Hannah Joyner, of Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson(2007). She has coedited anthologies including Women and Deafness: Double Visions(2006), Deaf and Disability Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2010), and Disability Histories(2014), and also served as editor-in-chief ofThe Encyclopedia of American Disability History(2009). Burch has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, National Archives regional residency fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities and Mellon Foundation grants, and a Fulbright Scholars award. Her latest book, which has recently received the National Women’s Studies Association Alison Piepmeier Book Prize, Committed: Native Families, Institutionalization, and Remembering(University of North Carolina Press, 2021) centers on peoples’ lived experiences inside and outside the Canton Asylum, a federal psychiatric institution created specifically to detain American Indians.
Martin Atherton discusses his career and research in Deaf Studies, deaf history, and beyond!
Episode Image: Deafness, Community and Culture in Britain: Leisure and Cohesion, 1945-95, by Martin Atherton. The book cover features a black-and-white photo of a group of about 25 people posing in front of a bus. They are wearing suits and coats.
Martin Atherton retired from his post as Course Leader in British Sign Language and Deaf Studies in 2018 after 20 years as a member of staff at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in the UK. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in British Sign Language and Deaf Studies from UCLan and a PhD in History from De Montfort University. He has written extensively on various aspects of deaf history in the UK.
