The Disability History Association (DHA) would like to congratulate Hannah Zeavin, winner of the 2022 DHA Outstanding Article or Book Chapter Award for “Hot and Cool Mothers,” differences 32, no. 3 (2021): 53–84.
Zeavin’s sophisticated article rose to the top of a highly competitive and wide-ranging group of submissions. Committee members described Zeavin’s work as “beautifully written and researched,” “theoretically adept,” and “exceptional in its braiding of feminist history, histories of disabled children, the ‘creation’ of disability, affect theory, discourse analysis, and histories of capitalism, race, and 20th century America.” Zeavin’s “fascinating” and “remarkable” article explores “how queerness and neurodivergence are said to be ‘produced’ in ways which stigmatize a variety of mothers. It shows, as such, how disability and disabled children are affectively and linguistically utilized as a tool for misogyny, racism, and ableism, pushing the field to think about disability more broadly than impairment.” The Committee particularly commended Zeavin’s work for its clarity and use of primary sources, bringing “together a wide range of philosophical, pop culture, professional and pedagogical supports for its argument.”
The Honorable Mention has been awarded to Evan Sullivan for “America’s living unknown soldiers: amnesia and veteran imposters after the Great War,” First World War Studies 12, no. 2 (2021): 155-171. The Committee noted that the author’s “exploration into neuro-psychiatric wounds—and amnesia in particular—was well researched. Sullivan brought out integral questions relating to the legitimacy of hidden disabilities and the ways in which they challenged assumptions about status, gender, and race.” The article made “impressive use of primary sources,” with “fascinating and compelling” case studies that “present a more subtle understanding of a common theme in disability history – the faking of impairments and suspicion of disabled people.” The Committee also commended Sullivan’s piece for being “tightly written, comprehensive, argumentative, and chronologically clear,” noting that its “elucidations of the web of anxiety in the post-war era of disability fakery, familial grief, a national desire to ‘return’ to normalcy, and restrictive welfare are masterful.”
