Podcast Episode 35 – Hospitals, Archives, and Ethics in Southern US Disability History

Leah Richier discusses her work on mental hospitals in the US South.

Episode Image: 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.

Download mp3 file here.
Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guest

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.