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Teaching Disability History in the Contemporary United States
[Editor’s Note: Below several scholars discuss their experiences in teaching a variety of courses that introduce students to disability history. In the future, I am eager to present courses for other times and places. The DHA will also be launching a syllabus pool that will contain annotated copies of syllabi as well as any relevant discussions. Please feel free to contribute anything you feel might be useful.]
“Teachable Moments in Disability History for a Class that Had Nothing to Do with Disability”
Kim Nielsen, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, nielsenk@uwgb.edu
Several weeks ago my semester-long U.S. Women's History class discussed the short stories of Zitkala-Sa. Her collection, American Indian Stories (Bison Books, 2003), chronicles the governmental and religious boarding school experiences of indigenous children. In the past I've used the stories to discuss Indian women's experiences of westward expansion and how the dominant culture used such schools to teach specific gender roles that were often contrary to indigenous cultures.
This semester my students became engrossed in Zitkala-Sa's portrayal of how school staff attempted to deny native children use of their own language. We analyzed why that happened, why and how students resisted, and the contentious and ever-changing links between language and American identity.
In the midst of this discussion, with no planning (I'm embarrassed to admit), I explained that deaf students had similar experiences. At deaf boarding schools administrators also attempted to deny students use of their own language. I went on to draw parallels between the gender ideals taught in both boarding school systems.
That day I unexpectedly learned two things:
One, the linkage between these two boarding school experiences greatly enhanced and deepened the intellectual energy in my classroom. By broadening the picture, students better understood the suppression of indigenous language not only as “being mean to Indians” but as part of an effort to define American identity. It allowed us to recognize the specifics of the boarding school experience for both deaf and Indian students, while placing those specifics in a much broader ideological and historical moment. Additionally, it forced them, and allowed them, to place deaf history—something they'd never before considered—in their personal historical arsenal and as a part of the American story.
Two, this brief mention greatly empowered at least one of my students. After class a young woman approached me, nearly jumping out of her skin with excitement. A large portion of her extended family was deaf, she said, and she had grown up on stories of deaf boarding schools. She knew some deaf history, had seen the recent PBS production “Through Deaf Eyes,” but never had one of her teachers acknowledged the history of her family. This thrilled her.
Thus, my accidental link between the boarding school experiences of Native and Deaf students expanded my students both intellectually and personally. It reinforced the possibilities of disability history as both intellectual force and pedagogical tool.