Podcast Episode 36 – Disability and the History of Jewish Immigration to the United States

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Hannah Zaves-Greene discusses her work on Jews and the “public charge provision” in US immigration history.

Episode Image: An extract of the 1917 US Immigration Act. The text begins: “Sec. 3. That the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States: All Idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons; persons who have had one or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; persons with chronic alcoholism; paupers; professional beggars; vagrants; persons afflicted with tuberculosis in any form or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living”

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About Our Guest

Hannah Zaves-Greene received her PhD in American Jewish history from New York University’s Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, where she focused on the intersection of immigration, gender and women’s history, legal and political history, and disability studies. Her dissertation, Able to Be American: American Jews and the Public Charge Provision in United States Immigration Policy, 1891-1934, explores how American Jews responded to discrimination against immigrants on the basis of health, disability, and gender, in federal law and its enforcement. She has taught multiple courses at Cooper Union and the New School for Social Research, presented her research at national and international conferences, and delivered guest lectures for both academic and activist groups. Currently, she is a visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Her public history writing appears online at the Jewniverse, the Activist History Review, and the Jewish Women’s Archive, and her academic work has been published in American Jewish History and AJS Perspectives. Additionally, she has forthcoming work in the Journal of Transnational American Studies and in an edited volume on Jewish and Irish migration with NYU Press.

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

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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.

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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.

Podcast Episode 34 – The Life and Work of Lucy Gwin

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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.

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About Our Guest

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.

Podcast Episode 33 – A Eugenic Institution in Progressive America

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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)

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About Our Guest

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.

Podcast Episode 32 – Remembering Native Kinship in and beyond Institutions

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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.

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About Our Guest

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 of The 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.