Celebrating Osiris 39: Disability and the History of Science

Columbia University
Fayerweather Hall, Room 513
1180 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10027

Disability has been a central—if unacknowledged—force in the history of science and the scientific disciplines. Across historical epistemology and laboratory research, disability has been “good to think with”: an object of investigation made to yield generalizable truths. Yet disability is rarely imagined to be the source of expertise, especially the kind of expertise that produces (rational, neutral, universal) scientific knowledge.

Jaipreet Virdi, Mara Mills, and Sarah F. Rose introduce a disability history of science in the current volume of Osiris, which they co-edited. Across the volume, contributors trace the disabling impacts of scientific theories and practices in the contexts of war, factory labor, insurance, and colonialism; others excavate racial and settler ableism in the history of scientific facts, protocols, and collections; still others query the boundaries between scientific, lay, and disability expertise. Contending that disability alters method, the volume’s authors bring new sources and interpretation techniques to the history of science, overturn familiar narratives, apply disability analyses to established terms and archives, and discuss accessibility issues for disabled historians.

In this talk, the three editors emphasize how disability history and the history of science need to be placed in conversation to foreground disability epistemologies, disabled scientists, and disability sciencing (engagement with scientific tools and processes). Looking beyond the paradigms of medicalization and industrialization, the editors further propose a “scientific management model of disability” to account for the shaping of disabled lives and relations by the applied sciences, from the ancient world to the present.

Event Speakers:

• Mara Mills, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University
• Sarah F. Rose, Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington
• Jaipreet Virdi, Associate Professor of History at the University of Deleware

This event is part of the New York History of Science Lecture Series.
Co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Disability Studies.