Creating Care

An individual’s disabled experience can catalyze the creation of technological adaptations and care networks. In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, disability was experienced communally, not in isolation. Although the following artifacts span economic, social, and religious contexts, they all resulted from a collective urge to care with and assist people who experienced various disabilities, both chronic and acute. Writer and activist Mia Mingus refers to this kind of closeness, ease, and safety, which she experiences as a disabled person, as “access intimacy.” “Without it,” she writes, “there is survival, but rarely true, whole connection.”¹ The following objects highlight how individuals cared for themselves independently and in collaborative relationships with others.

Gabrielle Clement, Cameron “Joey” Koo, Madeleine Ward-Schultz

¹Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link,” blogpost, May 5, 2011. Accessed 8 November 2025. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/.

Creating Care: Soothing Senses

Visual Description: 

This unlidded silver cup consists of a stout, bulbous, upside-down button mushroom shape and a shallow footrim with cascading round-edged tiers. Affixed to the vessel is the long, slender, straw-like spout and the flat, wide, softly-beveled handle. Smooth and cool to the touch, the grapefruit-sized cup is light but solid with a slightly unbalanced physicality between its bottom-heavy center and its delicate handle. The lustrous, reflective qualities of the cup’s rounded surface reveal the wavy, mirror-altered form of the photographer’s lower body.

Interpretation: 

Boston silversmith John Dixwell crafted this silver spout cup to serve a soft, runny sustenance called posset to infants and bed resting individuals.¹ Popular during the late-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, posset was an eggnog-like beverage made with a milky base, sweetener, and alcohol that could be served warm or cold. Since the milk frequently curdled at warmer temperatures during cooking or eating, the user would suck the sweetened liquid through the cup’s straw-like spout and spoon out the creamy solids from the wide, unlidded opening for an added sensorial experience.² The user could easily drink from the ergonomically-designed cup independently or with assistance.

Instead of a fixed dining experience that mandated social behaviors and speeds of consumption, the cup’s user set the posset’s customizable temperature and their own drinking pace. Through a reoriented sense of temporality, the user ultimately held the power to slow and expand time to their own comfort level.

Artifact Information:

Spout Cup

John Dixwell

Boston, Massachusetts; about 1698–1725 Silver

1965.1357 Gift of Henry Francis du Pont

Madeleine Ward-Schultz

¹Iann M.G. Quimbly and Dianne Johnson, American Silver at Winterthur. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1995), 83-84.

²Anne Stobart, “‘The Danger Is Over’: News About the Sick,” in Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England.( Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 13-28 https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/udel-ebooks/reader.action?docID=4653878&ppg=148&c=UERG.

Creating Care: Comfort

Visual Description:

This early-nineteenth-century object resembles a plush armchair that was sawed in half by a skilled craftsperson. Designed to be placed at the head of a bed, it has three distinct parts: a rectangular backrest about the width of a person’s shoulders, two notched wooden rails that curve under the backrest, and a hinged wooden flap that attaches to the rails to elevate the backrest to different angles. The manual ratcheting system functions like a poolside deck chair. The bed-chair is upholstered with prickly horsehair fill that can be felt through the fragile blue and gold floral fabric that covers the chair. There are prominent sweat stains on the bed-chair’s backrest, right wing, and right armrest, as well as significant tears on both armrests.

Interpretation:

Bed-chairs transformed disabled people’s bedrooms from spaces of confinement and exclusion to environments that fostered both independence and intimate companionship.¹ As adjustable furniture, bed-chairs supported the bodies of people who spent most or all their time in the warmth and comfort of their beds. The bed-chair’s armrests could alleviate the discomforting experience of holding heavy books, and an elevated seated position could enhance a disabled person’s experience with assisted eating.² Bed-chairs were also communal objects. For example, between 1777 and 1807, Philadelphia diarist Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker loaned her family’s bed-chair over 30 times to those in her community.³ Caretakers or family members likely operated the bed-chair by lifting or lowering the backrest as desired. Bed-chairs also embodied period etiquette customs of “good posture.”⁴ With a ratcheted backrest, a disabled person of an elite socio-economic class could appear presentable to friends and other welcomed guests.⁵ Although we don’t know exactly who used this bed-chair, the stains and wear that remain testify to its role as support and facilitator of community.

Artifact Information: 

Bed chair

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; 1815-1835 Maple, tulip poplar, iron, horse hair, linen, cotton

1994.0069 Gift of Dr. Burton W. Pearl

Gabrielle Clement

¹Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link,” blog, May 5, 2011.; Jina B. Kim, “The (Crip) Revolution Begins at Home,” in GLQ (2024): 532.

²“Sick Chamber Furniture,” in Mechanics Magazine vol 6, no.141-175 (1826), 28. Courtesy of Hathitrust. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hx3sqg

³Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker and Elaine Forman Crane ed., The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker (Northeastern Univ. Press, 1991).

⁴David M. Turner and Alun Withry, “Technologies of the Body: Polite Consumption and the Correction of Deformity in Eighteenth-Century England,” in History 99, no. 338 (December 2014): 781.

⁵Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 (New York: Abrams, 1990), 124.

Creating Comfort: On the Move

Visual Description: 

This Shaker walker is crafted from pieces of hardwood and assembled in a tripod construction.  The handles resemble the form of a rolling pin, with two curved handles and a central median for ease of grip. The dowel legs connect to the base of the handles, and each leg is attached to an intersecting side stretcher at the mid-base for added support. There is an emphasis on symmetry in the walker’s composition for user stability and support, which aligns with Shaker visual aesthetic orders of symmetry, simplicity, and utility. Its surface has been painted a dark brown hue that emphasizes the organic pattern of the wood grain, and its body has gained a patina that creates unexpected moments of contrast across its surface.

Interpretation:  

This nineteenth-century walker reflects the craft and ingenuity of the Shaker community, who are known for their exceptional design and wooden crafts. The Shakers engineered assistive devices of a wide variety for elderly and disabled people. Their community emphasized religious devotion through mutual labor, fellowship, and ritual, and members participated across life stages. Assistive devices like this walker enabled community members to continue participation in daily life. Belongings like the Walker can be read as acts of crip technoscience and community ingenuity as they required shared knowledge, resources, and personal skill to craft. The life of the now unknown user has been engrained in the walker’s surface. The walker retains contact marks from consistent grip, oil marks on the handles from daily work, and scratches on the legs from navigating busy halls of the meetinghouse. The object’s tripod form provided dynamic assistance to the user in moving between spaces, but also acted as a stable frame to rest against while in worship or craft, and for transitions from sitting to standing. The form and materiality of this walker emphasize the Shaker user’s commitment to community, personal agency, and devotion.

Photograph of Furniture pieces

Edward Deming Andrews, 1894-1964.; silver gelatin print

SA 0650 Edward Deming Andrews Memorial Shaker Collection, Winterthur Library.

Artifact Information:

Walker

United States; 19th century wood

Cameron “Joey” Koo

¹Please note that the term Shakers is the contemporary name for the community known as the United Society of the Believers of Christ’s Second Appearing. 

²John T.  Kirk, The Shaker World: Art, Life, Belief. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997): 110-11. Many Shaker assistive devices like canes, proto-orthopedic shoes, walkers, cradles, and wheelchairs exist in the collection of the Shaker Museum (Chatham, New York).

³Merry B Post. “Medical Practice in the Harvard Shaker Church Family, 1834-1843” American Communal Societies Quarterly 4. No 4. (October 2010): 218-22; M. Burks. “Faith, Form, Finish: Shaker Furniture in Context” in Shaker Design: Out of This World. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.) 34-35.

Crip Temporalities: Crip time and Futurities

How does disability impact one’s perceptions of time, of one’s future? The concept of “crip time” [see the Exhibition Glossary] from Critical Disability Studies, challenges the idea that all bodies, minds, and lives operate, change, and grow in the same linear stages. It asks how we might imagine “better” futures, shifting the focus from “curing” disability, to embracing the ways lives are both different and interdependent. The artifacts in this section tell stories of disability that allow us to explore how “crip time” might have been historically experienced or perceived, and how futures of disability have been envisioned through material things. 

Sydney Collins, Sandra James, Bella Lam, Julia Rinaudo

"Crip" Temporalities: Creative Foundations

Visual Description:

This small watercolor under a wide, white mat in a pale wood frame is of a chubby mouse, like one the artist would have encountered around his barn. The thin dark ink outline is filled-in with a warm solid color using brush strokes suggestive of coarse and matted fur. Painted in profile with one wide-open, upward glancing eye, two tiny, perked ears, and four ready paws, the feeling is anticipatory, as if the mouse is clever and poised to dart out of the wood frame. The tail curls playfully close to the edge of the paper that contains the creature and points to the hand-written title below – Long-haired Meadow Mouse Female – each word underlined with a wavy “flourish” through which are cut hash marks, giving the animal an air of importance not generally afforded a mouse. The picture transcends a straight-forward natural history illustration with the hint of the creature’s personality imbued by the artist. 

Interpretation:

The subject of this watercolor, a meadow mouse, is exactly what the ten-year-old d/Deaf and nonverbal Amish artist, Henry Lapp, encountered around the barns where he was raised in late-nineteenth century Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Lapp and his older sister Lizzie, also born deaf, loved to draw and paint with watercolors as children.¹ This early praxis may have been influenced by imagery in fables, needlework, fraktur (a decorative and illuminated Pennsylvania German art form) and container labels. Their artistic abilities evolved in this time and allowed them to envision futures where they could contribute to their community. As an adult, Lapp made furniture and used drawing as the basis for a catalog of his pieces, helping him to communicate with customers. He also enjoyed making paintings to share with younger children in his community. His sister moved from painting to textiles, making and tailoring clothing and embroidering linens.² The siblings’ early paintings were not discovered and collected until the 1970s due to the separatist nature of the Old Order Amish and unwritten rules discouraging art display and, in some cases, art making. These practices were seen as a potential threat to humility and, in the case of figurative art, a defiance of the second Commandment.³ 

Artifact Information:

Long-haired Meadow Mouse Female Henry L. Lapp

Watercolor Drawing on Paper

1872 Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania

2025.0009.002 A Gift of the Estate of Janice A. Egeland

Sandra James

¹Louise Stoltzfus, Two Amish Folk Artists: The Story of Henry Lapp and Barbara Ebersol. (Good Books, 1995).

²Dainiel J. McCauley III, “The Paintings of Henry and Elizabeth Lapp”, Folk Art, Fall 1994, https://issuu.com/american_folk_art_museum/docs/folkart_19_3_fall1994/63

³George Bachman, The Old Order Amish of Lancaster County (The Pennsylvania German Society, 1961).

"Crip" Temporalities: A Stitch in Time

Visual Description: 

A white linen handkerchief with slightly warped edges, ebbing and flowing with the uneven stitches of the hem. The stitches are “whip stitches”, creating barely noticeable dots of string on the front side while securing the hem in a series of diagonal stitches on the back of the fabric. The stitches are done with two strings together, rather than the typical single thread.  Vertical lines tinted rust brown with iron marks where it was once folded into neat squares. Other stains appear throughout- signs of wear over the years. A dab here, a wipe there, the life of the handkerchief recorded.  Along the top edge carefully written in dark ink in flowing script it says: “Rebecca Smithies Senior. Made by her a short time before her death, while totally blind. She died 26 April 1827- Aged 81 years.”

Interpretation:

Rebecca Smithies Senior hand stitched the hem of this linen handkerchief, finishing it in 1827. After her death that same year, someone inscribed her name, age, and date of death, stating that she finished the hem “when totally blind”. Until the mid-to-late nineteenth century it was common and expected for women have skills in hand sewing, taught both in schools and by other women at home. This handkerchief is an example of “plain sewing”, the most essential set of skills which encompasses seaming, hemming, and the crafting of other simple garments. Pay attention to the pattern of the stitching, moving from the lower left outward. Though there are small inconsistencies in the size of the stitches that lead to the gentle curves along the perimeter of the fabric, a steady rhythm of motion reveals itself through the hands of its maker. Whether she had been blind through the whole process of making or had lost her vision while working on the handkerchief, the embodied knowledge Rebecca Smithies obtained growing up guided her hand and her needle up, down, and around again through touch and experience. Today we find her preserved not only in her stitches but in the words of someone, maybe a friend or family member, who cared for her and her belonging and chose to memorialize her with an inscription.

Artifact Information:

Handkerchief, Hemmed by Rebecca Smithies, England; about 1827, Linen

2013.48.31 Gift of Sandy Lerner

Julia Rinaudo

"Crip" Temporalities: Casting an Age

Visual Description: 

The two ceramic figures standing about 7.5 inches tall are immediately recognizable as elderly by the gray hair peeking out beneath their caps and around their hollowed cheeks. The woman leans slightly forward, supporting herself with a dark brown cane in her right hand. Her male companion stands more precariously, placing weight on the cane in his left hand and on a long crutch tucked beneath his right armpit. Both figures pose on top of green mounds that sit flush against a shallow white pedestal with the word “age” painted across the front.

Interpretation:

The pair of small ceramic figurines stand apart, but their matching square plinths indicate that they have been in each other’s company since their creation in the early nineteenth century. Cast in molds, the elderly figures dressed for a cold day are likely part of Staffordshire Pottery’s series celebrating different life stages that include courtship, marriage, and sentimental scenes of childrearing and family life. Staffordshire ceramicists likely drew inspiration from “steps-of-life” prints popularized in Europe during this time. Such prints usually depicted a couple climbing a staircase which peaked at around 50 years and then descended into old age. Both of these cultural objects reflect European ideals of how time should shape the human body. However, models of aging like these exclude bodies that change in different ways. “Crip time” challenges this ableist view on aging, pointing out that the effects of time are not standardized or linear.

“Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings.” -Ellen Samuels, “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time”

Figure 1. The various ages and degrees of human life explained by these twelve different stages. Hand-colored etching, published by John Pitts, London, England. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1994-0619-14

Artifact Information 

Old Age Figures

Staffordshire, England; 1815-1830 Earthenware (pearlware) with lead glaze

2002.0030.0038.001 and 2002.0030.0038.002 Gift of Thomas N. and A. Pat Bernard

Sydney Collins

"Crip" Temporalities: Perceiving Womanhood

Visual description: Two drawings of women lying in bed.  On the left, wide cushion and plump sofa prop up a figure adorned with ruffles, not a hair out of place. She rests languid but serene, as a  rough-hewn young girl looks up admiringly.  On the right, in a bedroom at Christmastime, the young girl rests on plush pillows surrounded by adoring siblings

Interpretation: Addie Ledyard’s pen-and-ink illustrations for Susan Coolidge’s popular children’s novel, What Katy Did (1872), highlight the titular character’s experiences with physical disability.  The raggedy tomboy, Katy, learns to take care of her family and home as she is unable to leave her room. The young girl with torn clothes and rough manner, who looks up to her Cousin Helen’s fine style and radical acceptance, is seen in the first image.  Both figures contrast with the second image, as Ledyard portrays Katy surrounded by family with a vibrant spirit not seen in Helen’s portrait.  In this familiar narrative of “overcoming” disability, Katy becomes a model woman, exceeding even the frail beauty she perceives in Helen, and ultimately learns to walk again.

These illustrations provide informative portraits of life in the nineteenth century for physically disabled women of the American middle class.  Equally important is disability’s role in fiction as a tool for development into a “proper” woman.  They raise challenging questions about the intersection of disability and gender: What kind of disabled life was and is considered beautiful?  Who is allowed to be perceived as beautiful?  How might we ethically and affirmingly represent the life of people with physical disabilities?

Artifact Information: 

Bella Lam 

Negotiations

Mass-marketed everyday and decorative objects popularized public fascination with disability, complicating negotiations between whose demands and desires are seen. Yet, even the most mundane items, a ceramic dish, a book, and a pair of tinted spectacles may be sites of dialogue about institutional pride, d/Deaf and nonverbal education, performative displays of hearing, and the stigmas of displayed disability. These artifacts catered to able-bodied aesthetics, pandering to narratives of an ableist society and rendering disability a “problem” to “solve” or “curiosity” to observe. But upon closer reading, the nuanced negotiations these artifacts tell are contrasting tales of challenges and victories for disabled voices during shifting perceptions of disability’s place in society.

Phoebe Caswell, Sheng Ren, Lauren Teresi,

Negotiations: Hearing Sign

Visual Description:

A palm-sized children’s book opens, revealing delicate black and white engravings of costumed boys practicing British Sign Language. Each figure is framed by five signs/cartouches of a single letter, striped ribbon, and abstract floral garlands. Turning to letter ‘S’, a child in a fur-lined coat and knight’s helmet holds a left fist over his right hand, interlocking his pinkie fingers to sign ‘S’. A hissing snake emerges from his helmet’s curling plume and playfully mimics the letter’s sound. Atop the page reads: “S, it is true, is apt to [hiss], But will not take our scheme [amiss].”  

Interpretation:

This early nineteenth-century British Sign Language manual was beautifully bound in once-bright red morocco goatskin, with blue and gray marbled boards and rich illustrations.¹ Designed for “amusement and instruction,” the children’s book exemplifies early modern fascination with deafness. These engraved portraits of white, costumed boys signing letters suggest the book’s sign language tutorials were more digestible for an able-bodied society’s hunger for a taste of d/Deaf culture. Engraver Charles Knight recasts deafness within a more familiar world of writing, surrounding figures with witty sound play, such as the child signing ‘S’ paired with a hissing snake. Author R.R.’s rhyming verses similarly amplify sound’s visual and auditory presence, warning that ‘S’ is “apt to [hiss],” a playful imitation, albeit inaccessible to d/Deaf readers. Yet, the spine’s handwritten label indicates previous ownership by a British “Deaf and Dumb” school, an outmoded identification, implying a history of d/Deaf use. Instructive or amusing, The Invited Alphabet did not sit idle. Opened, it falls apart, the worn-smooth cover detaching from the spine. Habitual handling unfolds in frayed, stained paper, pages loosened from bindings, and child-like graphite doodles to reveal an unspoken legacy of d/Deaf adaptation and, perhaps, self-identification. 

Artifact Information:

The Invited Alphabet , or Address of A to B: Containing His Friendly Proposal for the Amusement and Instruction of Good Children

R.R. (author) and Charles Knight (engraver)

London, England: B. Tabart and Co., Juvenile and School Library, New Bond-Street, 1809.

PZ6 R7in, Rare Books Stacks, Winterthur Library

Lauren Teresi

¹Unlike spoken British and American English, British Sign Language (BSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are two mutually unintelligible languages with divergent origins, alphabets, and vocabularies. For more information on BSL, see Jordan Fenlon, Kearsy Cormier, Ramas Rentelis, Adam Schembri, Katherine Rowley, Robert  Adam, and Bencie Woll’s BSL SignBank: A lexical database of British Sign Language (London: Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London, 2014) https://bslsignbank.ucl.ac.uk/.

Negotiations: Placing Disability

Visual Description:

This is an oval ceramic dish with an everted rim that rises and falls gently, a rounded body, and a slightly contracted base. The rim forms soft waves, beneath which runs a row of evenly spaced circular perforations. Using the transfer-printing technique, blue designs depict a harbor scene of Castle Garden at the center, flanked by neoclassical buildings on both sides. The surface feels smooth and cool to the touch, the side walls are firm and thick, and several tiny glaze pops on the base feel like coarse grains of salt. When lightly tapped, the dish emits a short, muted tone.

Interpretation：

This transfer-printed ceramic serving dish, produced at the Ralph Stevenson manufactory in Staffordshire, United Kingdom, between 1820 and 1825, emerged during the post–War of 1812 revival of transatlantic commerce. The dish presents three distinct scenes rendered in underglaze blue. At the center, Castle Garden in New York depicts a lively harbor with elegantly dressed figures strolling, conversing, and gazing toward the water, conveying an atmosphere of leisure and sociability. On one side, the Hartford, Connecticut, “Deaf and Dumb Asylum” appears as a dignified neoclassical building with rows of evenly spaced windows and a pedimented façade, while on the opposite side, the New York Almshouse features a symmetrical structure set behind a low fence that separates people from the institution. Departing from earlier British consumer preferences for pastoral landscapes, Stevenson’s factory mass-produced utilitarian wares for the American market that celebrated public architecture as emblems of civilization and order. The contrast is striking: the central harbor scene celebrates recreation and openness, whereas the peripheral institutions evoke silence and control. This disparity transforms charitable architecture into a commodified symbol of moral civilization, while reinforcing a cultural assumption that excludes disabled individuals from the sphere of pleasure. Under the guise of “civilization and progress,” such exclusion erases the lived experiences, social presence, and pride of disabled communities, revealing how nineteenth-century visual culture equated humanity with productivity and material objects perpetuated ableist health.

Artifact Information: 

Dish: Esplanade and Castle Garden, NY; Deaf & Dumb Asylum, Hartford, CT; Almshouse, NY

Ralph Stevenson factory (Maker)

Cobridge, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom; 1820–1825

Earthenware (pearlware); lead glaze

Molded, printed

12.6 (H) × 26 (L) × 18.5 (W) cm

Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont

1958.1820

Winterthur Museum

Sheng Ren

Negotiations: Sight Refashioned

Visual Description: 

A small pair of silver-framed spectacles sits nestled in a box filled with white tissue paper. Its lenses are small, oval, and tinted, coloring the world seen through them a shocking, icy blue. They connect via a thin, curved bridge for the nose, with two silver arms jutting from either side of the spectacles. The left arm bears the inscription “McALLISTER PHILADA.” Two pieces of metal compose the arms, one sitting within the other on a rail, allowing for extension. At the end of each arm, there are also teardrop-shaped holes. The silver frame gleams under the fluorescent lighting, with only a hint of tarnish; the lenses are lightly chipped where they meet the frames, reflecting the years of use.

Interpretation: 

Manufactured in the late eighteenth century by Philadelphia-based silversmith John McAllister. These spectacles would have been worn by a relatively wealthy individual, as polished silver-framed spectacles with tinted lenses from the McAllisters cost upwards of five dollars at the time, nearly twice the yearly wage for the average laborer in the United States during that period. 

The startling icy blue lenses were conventional for individuals with weakening eyesight and those who spent much of their time straining their eyes. At the time, tinted lenses were believed to slow the decline in vision and protect the wearer from the glare of lights. For much of the 18th century, Spectacles were considered at once a fashion faux pas and a negative indicator of visual disability for those who could not afford the luxurious materials, yet a symbol of scholarly prowess for the upper echelon of society. During the nineteenth century, however, spectacles became accessible to the masses and more commonly worn by able-bodied people for protection from the sun. Today, tinted glasses are often worn as accessories, their immediate link to disability fading from the public's mind. 

Artifact Information: 

Phoebe Caswell 

Critical Glossary

Link to glossary: Exhibition Glossary

Need intro text/explanation.

Bibliography & Further Reading 

This bibliography highlights the rich and growing list of resources related to disability studies theory, materiality, and disability justice. Many of these sources have informed the discussion and interpretation of our artifacts, as well as our general approach to creating this exhibition. Organized thematically, this bibliography starts with works on broader disability theory and materiality before narrowing down to museum accessibility and scholarship examining disability materiality in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Some of these resources are behind a paywall, but may be accessible through your local public library. 

Disability Theory and Materiality

Hamraie, Aimi, and Kelly Fritsch. “Crip Technoscience Manifesto.” Edited by Chosson 

Etienne, Lucas Fritz, and Lucie Camous. Catalyst 5, no. 1 (2019): 1–33. https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v5i1.29607.

Kafer, Alison. “Time for Disability Studies and a Future for Crips.” In Feminist, Queer, Crip, 

25–46. Indiana University Press, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gz79x.6. 

Kim, Jina B. 2024. “The (Crip) Revolution Begins At Home.” GLQ 30 (4): 531–35. 

https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-11331090.

Jackson, Liz. “Disability Dongle.” Platypus, April 19, 2022. 

https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/disability-dongle/. 

Ott, Katherine. “Disability Things: Material Culture and American Disability History,

1700–2010.” In Disability Histories, edited by Susan Burch and Michael Rembis, 119–35. University of Illinois Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt6wr5rt.11.

Samuels, Ellen. 2017. “Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time.” Disability Studies Quarterly 37 (3). 

https://dsq-sds.org/article/id/1565/. 

Museums and Access

Brilmyer, Gracen. “They Weren't Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in 

Mind: The Affect of Archival In/Accessibility and "Emotionally Expensive" Spatial Un/Belonging.” Archivaria 94 (2022): 120-153. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/873262. 

Cachia, Amanda. “Disability, Curating, and the Educational Turn: The Contemporary Condition 

of Access in the Museum.” On Curating, no. 24 (December 2014). https://www.on-curating.org/issue-24-reader/disability-curating-and-the-educational-turn-the-contemporary-condition-of-access-in-the-museum.html.

Coklyat, Bojana and Shannon Finnegan. “Alt Text as Poetry Project.” In Amanda Cachia ed., 

Curating Access : Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation, London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023.

Kleege, Georgina, and Scott Wallin. “Audio Description as a Pedagogical Tool.” Disability 

Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (2015): 2. https://dsq-sds.org/article/id/460/. 

Maunder, Patricia. “Awakening Our Sense of Touch.” In The Museum as Experience, 

edited by Susan Shifrin, 65–76. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781802701470-009. 

Mingus, Mia. 2011. “Access Intimacy: The Missing Link.” Leaving Evidence, May 5. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/access-intimacy-the-missing-link/.

Disability Justice

10 Principles of Disability Justice | Sins Invalid. n.d. Accessed September 17, 2025. https://sinsinvalid.org/10-principles-of-disability-justice/.

Eighteenth- through Twentieth-century Disability Studies and Materiality

Belolan, Nicole. 2024. “Disability History.” The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, January 3. https://inclusivehistorian.com/disability-history/.

Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. New York: Verso, 

Daen, Laurel. 2017. “Martha Ann Honeywell: Art, Performance, and Disability in the Early Republic.” Journal of the Early Republic 37 (2): 225–50. https://doi.org/10.1353/jer.2017.0019.

Gabbard, Dwight Christopher. “Disability Studies and the British Long Eighteenth Century.” 

Literature Compass 8, no. 2 (2011): 80–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2010.00771.x. 

Guffey, Elizabeth. “Cripping Things in Late Nineteenth-Century Art,” Youtube, Bard Events, 

April 2023 https://www.bgc.bard.edu/events/1438/25-apr-2023-cripping-things

Turner, David M. Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment. 

New York: Routledge, 2012.

Virdi, Jaipreet. 2024. “Deaf Futurity: Designing and Innovating Hearing Aids.” Medical Humanities 50 (4): 678–84. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2024-013011.

Sydney Collins, Julia Rinaudo, Lauren Teresi