Category: Podcasts

Podcast Episode 19 – Functional Fashions

Caroline Lieffers on

Liz Jackson and Natalie Wright discuss their Functional Fashions exhibit and other projects.

Episode Image: Functional Fashions for the Physically Handicapped, by Helen Cookman and Muriel Zimmerman. The cover has red drawings of a skirt and jacket, pants and jacket, and a child’s dress. Source: Chipstone.org

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Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guests

Liz Jackson is the founder of The Disabled List, a design organization that engages in disability as a creative practice. She is a curator at Critical Axis, a community driven project that collects and analyzes disability representation in media. Additionally, Liz co-founded Thisten, an audio-to-text transcription platform that makes voice content searchable. You can learn more about Liz at her personal website, The Girl with the Purple Cane.

Natalie Wright is a PhD student in Design History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining UW-Madison, Wright was the Charles Hummel Curatorial Fellow at The Chipstone Foundation where she collaboratively curated a wide variety of exhibits including “Functional Fashions.” Wright completed her MA at the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2015), and received her BA from the University of Toronto, Trinity College (2013). Her doctoral research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Podcast Episode 18 – Disability and Design

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Bess Williamson (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) discusses her new book on disability and design in US history.

Episode Image: Cover of Accessible America by Bess Williamson. It features design drawings of ramps, tinted in bold colours like green, blue, and orange.

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Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guest

Dr. Bess Williamson is a historian of design and material culture, focusing primarily on works and influences of the last half-century. She is particularly interested in social and political concerns in design, including environmental, labor, justice, and rights issues as they shape and are shaped by spaces and things. Her book Accessible America: A History of Design and Disability (NYU Press, 2019) traces the history of design responses to disability rights from 1945 to recent times. You can find her on Twitter @besswww and on Instagram @accessible.design.

Podcast Episode 17 – Special Education in Toronto

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Jason Ellis (University of British Columbia) discusses his new book on the history of special education in Toronto and beyond.

Episode Image: A Class by Themselves, by Jason Ellis. The cover shows a black and white photo of a boy arranging blocks on a board. A young woman in a white coat sits across the table from him, taking notes.

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Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guest

Jason Ellis, Associate Professor of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, is a historian of education. University of Toronto Press published his book, A Class by Themselves in 2019. He has also published on disability history in The Canadian Historical Review and (with Paul Axelrod) on special and inclusive educational policy in Teachers College Record. Currently he is writing a book about schooling, housing, opportunity, and inequality in a post-Second World War Canadian suburb.

Podcast Episode 16 – Perkins School for the Blind

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Jen Hale, archivist at the Perkins School for the Blind, discusses the school’s history and collections.

Episode Image: Exhibition of the Girls’ Manual Training Department, Perkins Institution. A group of girls sits in a circle knitting with two instructors helping. The girls wear dresses with lace collars, most have large bows in their hair, and all wear boots with laces. Source: Perkins Archives

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Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guest

Jen Hale is the Archivist for the Perkins School for the Blind. She has presented on the need for accessible photographs in digital collections and on legal and ethical considerations for digitization selection. Jen is a coauthor of Read by Touch: Stewarding the Reading and Writing Collection at the Perkins School for the Blind (Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, April 2016). More information about the Perkins archives is available at https://www.perkins.org/archives .

Podcast Episode 15 – California’s Eugenic Sterilization Program

Caroline Lieffers on

Natalie Lira (University of Illinois) discusses her work on eugenic sterilization, race, and reproductive justice in California.

Episode Image: Aerial photograph of Sonoma State Home, from 1950-52 Biennial Report of the California Department of Mental Hygiene, courtesy of Alex Wallerstein. The black and white image shows manicured grounds and numerous large, institutional buildings.

Download mp3 file here. 
Download pdf transcript here.

About Our Guest

Natalie Lira is an interdisciplinary scholar who examines the politics of reproduction and the ways that U.S. histories of racial and reproductive justice intersect. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an affiliate in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. Natalie is currently writing a book on Mexican-origin women and men’s experiences of sterilization and confinement in California state institutions during the early to mid-twentieth century. You can find her work in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies and the American Journal of Public Health. 

More information about the collaborative Sterilization and Social Justice Lab project mentioned in the interview is available at https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/ssj-mini-conference/sterilization-social-justice-lab.