View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Choice" Outstanding Academic Title 2003

"Burch's rich and well-researched chronicle of the U.S. Deaf community's efforts to claim and shape their full participation in public life between 1900 and 1942 reminds historians of the many forms debates have taken in U.S. history regarding how a proper citizen should look, act, and speak."
--"Reviews in American History"

"Burch offers insightful comparisons. Her book is important to the fields of Deaf studies and disability studies, but it will appeal to social historians as well."
--"Journal of American History"

"Forcefully and gracefully narrates Deaf people's dramatic struggle against hearing oppression in the early twentieth century. Incorporating new data from archival research and community interviews, Burch applies tools of social analysis to challenge earlier interpretations that underestimated Deaf people's success in preserving their core values. The resulting study is fascinating and important to students of American social history and disability."
--John Van Cleve, Gallaudet University

During the nineteenth century, American schools for deaf education regarded sign language as the "natural language" of Deaf people, using it as the principal mode of instruction and communication. These schools inadvertently became the seedbeds of an emerging Deaf community and culture. But beginning in the 1880s, an oralist movement developed that sought to suppress sign language, removing Deaf teachers and requiring deaf people to learn speech and lip reading. Historians have all assumed that in the early decades of the twentieth century oralism triumphed overwhelmingly.

Susan Burch shows us that everyone has it wrong; not only did Deaf students continue to use sign language in schools, hearing teachers relied on it as well. In Signs of Resistance, Susan Burch persuasively reinterprets early twentieth century Deaf history: using community sources such as Deaf newspapers, memoirs, films, and oral (sign language) interviews, Burch shows how the Deaf community mobilized to defend sign language and Deaf teachers, in the process facilitating the formation of collective Deaf consciousness, identity and political organization.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Choice" Outstanding Academic Title 2003

"Burch's rich and well-researched chronicle of the U.S. Deaf community's efforts to claim and shape their full participation in public life between 1900 and 1942 reminds historians of the many forms debates have taken in U.S. history regarding how a proper citizen should look, act, and speak."
--"Reviews in American History"

"Burch offers insightful comparisons. Her book is important to the fields of Deaf studies and disability studies, but it will appeal to social historians as well."
--"Journal of American History"

"Forcefully and gracefully narrates Deaf people's dramatic struggle against hearing oppression in the early twentieth century. Incorporating new data from archival research and community interviews, Burch applies tools of social analysis to challenge earlier interpretations that underestimated Deaf people's success in preserving their core values. The resulting study is fascinating and important to students of American social history and disability."
--John Van Cleve, Gallaudet University

During the nineteenth century, American schools for deaf education regarded sign language as the "natural language" of Deaf people, using it as the principal mode of instruction and communication. These schools inadvertently became the seedbeds of an emerging Deaf community and culture. But beginning in the 1880s, an oralist movement developed that sought to suppress sign language, removing Deaf teachers and requiring deaf people to learn speech and lip reading. Historians have all assumed that in the early decades of the twentieth century oralism triumphed overwhelmingly.

Susan Burch shows us that everyone has it wrong; not only did Deaf students continue to use sign language in schools, hearing teachers relied on it as well. In Signs of Resistance, Susan Burch persuasively reinterprets early twentieth century Deaf history: using community sources such as Deaf newspapers, memoirs, films, and oral (sign language) interviews, Burch shows how the Deaf community mobilized to defend sign language and Deaf teachers, in the process facilitating the formation of collective Deaf consciousness, identity and political organization.

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls. In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people-families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day-who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. In so doing, Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.

Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota. But detention at the Indian Asylum, as families experienced it, was not the beginning or end of the story. For them, Canton Asylum was one of many places of imposed removal and confinement, including reservations, boarding schools, orphanages, and prison-hospitals. Despite the long reach of institutionalization for those forcibly held at the asylum, the tenacity of relationships extended within and beyond institutional walls. In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people-families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day-who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. In so doing, Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent seventy-six years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including six in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life. Using legal records, institutional files, and extensive oral history interviews - some conducted in sign language - Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner piece together the story of a deaf man accused in 1925 of attempted rape, found insane at a lunacy hearing, committed to the criminal ward of the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, castrated, forced to labor for the institution, and held at the hospital for more than seven decades. Junius Wilson's life was shaped by some of the major developments of twentieth-century America: Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, deinstitutionalization, the rise of professional social work, and the emergence of the deaf and disability rights movements. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's work also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language. This moving study expands the boundaries of what biography can and should be. There is much to learn and remember about Junius Wilson - and the countless others who have lived unspeakable histories.

The field of disability history continues to evolve rapidly. In this collection, Susan Burch and Michael Rembis present nineteen essays that integrate critical analysis of gender, race, historical context, and other factors to enrich and challenge the traditional modes of interpretation still dominating the field.
As the first collection of its kind in over a decade, Disability Histories not only brings readers up to date on scholarship within the field but fosters the process of moving it beyond the U.S.-Western European axis by offering work on Africa, South America, and Asia. The result is a broad range of readings that open new vistas for investigation and study while encouraging scholars at all levels to redraw the boundaries that delineate who and what is considered of historical value.
Informed and accessible, Disability Histories is essential for classrooms engaged in all facets of disability studies within and across disciplines.
Contributors are Frances Bernstein, Daniel Blackie, Pamela Block, Elsbeth Bosl, Dea Boster, Susan K. Cahn, Alison Carey, Fatima Cavalcante, Jagdish Chander, Audra Jennings, John Kinder, Catherine Kudlick, Paul R. D. Lawrie, Herbert Muyinda, Kim E. Nielsen, Katherine Ott, Stephen Pemberton, Anne Quartararo, Amy Renton, and Penny Richards.