Call for Directors! (3 positions)

The Disability History Association is looking for a Director of Records (Secretary)! 

Would you like to be involved in supporting and promoting disability history? The Disability History Association’s Board of Directors is seeking applications for a new Director of Records. 

The responsibilities of the Director of Records include: 

  • keeping minutes of the Board’s monthly meetings;
  • managing records and policy documents;
  • participating in other Board activities as needed;
  • assisting the Treasurer and President with financial oversight; and
  • attending monthly Board meetings.

Directors also participate in other projects as required, as well as the general governance of the organization.

The time commitment is approximately 2-5 hours per week, though this may vary. Board members serve a three year term. This is an unpaid, volunteer position.

All Directors must agree to the DHA conflict of interest policy and sign a form. Sitting Directors are ineligible for DHA- and DHA-sponsored awards. You can read our policy in full here.

The DHA commits to anti-oppressive practices. Scholars who are from marginalized and equity-seeking communities are particularly encouraged to apply, as are community-based scholars. The board also welcomes non-historians and non-academics who engage with disability history in their work. Candidates will be contacted by the DHA President for further conversation, and final nominees will be elected by the Board of Directors.

To apply, please contact disability.history@gmail.com with a resume/CV or bio and a brief letter (maximum 1 page) describing your interest by March 24, 2024.

Please feel free to email disability.history@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.

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The Disability History Association is looking for a Treasurer

Would you like to be involved in supporting and promoting disability history? The Disability History Association’s Board of Directors is seeking applications for a Treasurer.

The responsibilities of the Treasurer include: 

  • initiating, overseeing, and recording business transactions;
  • monthly oversight of operating cash flow;
  • preparing annual budgets and quarterly and annual financial reports, 
  • filing taxes;maintaining the DHA’s status as a tax-exempt non-profit corporation; and
  • attending monthly Board meetings

Directors also participate in other projects as required, as well as the general governance of the organization.

The time commitment is approximately one hour per week, though this may vary. Board members serve a three year term. This is an unpaid, volunteer position.

All Directors must agree to the DHA conflict of interest policy and sign a form. Sitting Directors are ineligible for DHA- and DHA-sponsored awards. You can read our policy in full here.

The DHA commits to anti-oppressive practices. Scholars who are from marginalized and equity-seeking communities are particularly encouraged to apply, as are community-based scholars. The board also welcomes non-historians and non-academics who engage with disability history in their work. Candidates will be contacted by the DHA President for further conversation, and final nominees will be elected by the Board of Directors.

To apply, please contact disability.history@gmail.com with a resume/CV or bio and a brief letter (maximum 1 page) describing your interest. 

Please feel free to email disability.history@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.

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The Disability History Association is looking for a Director of Student Affairs

Would you like to be involved in supporting and promoting disability history? The Disability History Association’s Board of Directors is seeking applications for a Director of Student Affairs.

The responsibilities of the Director of Student Affairs include:

  • organizing the Disability History Graduate Writing Workshop;
  • facilitating monthly workshop sessions of the Disability History Graduate Writing Workshop; 
  • participating in the DHA committee to select recipients of our Conference Award; and
  • attending monthly Board meetings.

Directors also participate in other projects as required, as well as the general governance of the organization.

The time commitment is approximately 2-5 hours per week, though this may vary. Board members serve a two year term. This is an unpaid, volunteer position.

All Directors must agree to the DHA conflict of interest policy and sign a form. Sitting Directors are ineligible for DHA- and DHA-sponsored awards. You can read our policy in full here.

The DHA commits to anti-oppressive practices. Scholars who are from marginalized and equity-seeking communities are particularly encouraged to apply, as are community-based scholars. The board also welcomes non-historians and non-academics who engage with disability history in their work. Candidates will be contacted by the DHA President for further conversation, and final nominees will be elected by the Board of Directors.

To apply, please contact disability.history@gmail.com with a resume/CV or bio and a brief letter (maximum 1 page) describing your interest. 

Please feel free to email disability.history@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns.

Podcast Episode 43 – Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages

Doug Crandell discusses his latest book, Twenty-Two Cents an HourDisability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages.

Episode Image: Cover of Twenty-Two Centers an Hour: Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages by Doug Crandell. The cover is white with twenty-two pennies laid out in four columns. The title is printed among the rows of pennies.

Download mp3 file here.
Download pdf transcript here.

About our Guest

Doug has worked for decades in employment and disability supports. He’s an advocate for a sibling with disabilities. In Twenty-Two Cents an Hour, he focuses on how the Disability Industrial Complex is often impenetrable, mired in deficit-thinking, and controlled by the lobbying of trade groups that do little for people with disabilities. Doug has published eight books with publishers including Penguin-Random House, Chicago Review Press, Virgin Books, and Cornell University Press. His essays on labor, mental health, and disability appear regularly in the SUN magazine. He directs the training and technical assistance center known as www.advancingemployment.com. Additional information is available at: www.dougcrandell.com  and www.abolish14c.com.

Podcast Episode 42 – Allyship, Parent Activism, and Disability Rights

Allison C. Carey, Pamela Block, and Richard K. Scotch discuss their co-authored book, Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities.

Episode Image: Cover of Allies and Obstacles by Allison C. Carey, Pamela Block, and Richard K. Scotch. The cover is white with a light blue border framing the title of the book and a painting underneath the title. The painting includes splotches and splashes of multi-colored paint on white canvas, with a thick streak of green paint in the middle. On top of the green streak is a red heart, outlined with a blue and white border that looks finger painted.

Download mp3 file here.
Download pdf transcript here.

About our Guests

Allison C. Carey is a Professor of Sociology, Chair of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, and director of the MS in Organizational Development and Leadership at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. She is author of a textbook on the Sociology of Disability, Disability and the Sociological Imagination (2022, Sage), as well as On the Margins of Citizenship: Intellectual Disability and Civil Rights in Twentieth Century America (2009, Temple University Press), and co-author of Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities (2020). She has co-edited several volumes, including two with the book series Research in Social Science and Disability with Emerald Press and now serves as its series co-editor. Allies and Obstacles was awarded the 2022 Outstanding Publication Award from the Disability and Society section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the 2021 Scholarly Achievement Award from the North Central Sociological Association. In 2021 she was awarded the Outstanding Career in the Sociology of Disability by the Disability and Society section of ASA.

Pamela Block is a Professor of Anthropology at Western University. Her research interests include disability culture, cultural perceptions of disability, and the intersections of disability, sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, and social status.  She studies disability experience on individual, organizational and community levels, with past funded research involving socio-environmental barriers, empowerment/capacity-building, and health promotion. Her qualitative research methodologies combine historical and discourse analyses with community-based ethnographic, autoethnographic, and participatory approaches. She is particularly interested in movements for disability liberation (justice and rights) and disability oppression (eugenics, sterilization, mass-incarceration and killing) in Brazil, the United States and Canada

Richard K. Scotch is Professor of Sociology and Public Policy & Political Economy at the University of Texas at Dallas.  His teaching includes courses on medical sociology, public health, social stratification, and social and health policy, while his research focuses on a variety of social policy topics related to disability, health, and education. 

Dr. Scotch received his B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago in 1973 and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Harvard University in 1975 and 1982 respectively.  Prior to joining the UTD faculty in 1983, Dr. Scotch worked on the evaluation staff of the Virginia Division for Children and as an analyst with the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.  In 1982-1983, Dr. Scotch served as a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of U.S. Representative Paul Simon (D-Ill). 

Dr. Scotch is the author of several books and numerous articles and monographs on social policy reform and social movements in disability, health care, education, and human services including. From Good Will to Civil Rights, Disability and Community, Disability Protests: Contentious Politics 1970-1999. His 2020 book, coauthored with Pam Block and Allison Carey, is Allies and Obstacles: Disability Activism and Parents of Children with Disabilities; the book received “best book” awards from the North Central Sociological Association and the Section on Disability in Society of the American Sociological Association. His current research projects include a follow-up edited volume of narratives by activist parents of children with disabilities, interviews with political candidates with disabilities, and a five-year study with Dohyeong Kim that examines social and community barriers experienced by burn injury survivors.

Dr. Scotch serves as a reviewer for numerous professional journals, university presses, private foundations, and government agencies. He has been active in the local health and human service community in North Texas for four decades, working with agencies that include the North Texas Behavioral Health Authority, Collin County, Dallas County, the Dallas Healthy Start Initiative, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, Educational First Steps, the Texas Pride Impact Funds, and Parkland Health and Hospital System.

**If you would like to purchase Allies and Obstacles, you can use discount code “FALLTUP” at Temple University Press through the end of October 2023.**

2023 DHA Outstanding Book Award

The Disability History Association (DHA) is delighted to announce the results of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award. The depth and breadth of this year’s submissions, as well as of the individual works, are a testament to the continued vitality of disability history and to its capacity for expanding the historical discipline more broadly. Please join the DHA in extending congratulations and appreciation to Wei Yu Wayne Tan (winner) and Alexandre Sumpf (honorable mention), as well as to the communities that fostered their scholarship.

Wei Yu Wayne Tan was declared the winner for Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and Identity (University of Michigan Press, 2022).

Cover of book Blind in Early Modern Japan: Disability, Medicine, and IdentityThe committee’s comments included:

Blind in Early Modern Japan is a “carefully constructed work [that] fills in vital historical gaps: early modern era, Japan, and blind history.” It is “an impressive piece of scholarship” that “reveals new understandings of the relationships between medicine/systems of medicine and being blind, as well as how (a non-Western) religion contributed to the meaning and experience of being blind.” Tan “has done a superb job of locating and interpreting from a disability history perspective the experiences of blind people,” showing “how blind people formed an identifiable group of professionals from musicians, acupuncturists, and scholars, among other occupations, with elite males forming their own guild.” Ultimately, “there are many things to commend [in] this book’s contributions to disability history.”


Alexandre Sumpf was awarded the honorable mention for The Broken Years: Russia’s Disabled War Veterans, 1904-1921 (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Cover of book The Broken Years: Russia's Disabled War Veterans, 1904-1921The committee’s comments included:

“A superbly researched study of disabled veterans in Russia,” The Broken Years “addresses a significant omission in the historical record and insists on the important role disabled veterans have played in Russia’s past.” Characterized by “extensive, wide-ranging, and multilingual archival work,” the book importantly draws upon “first-person accounts from disabled soldiers’ points of view.” Sumpf is “expansive yet meticulous in his argument,” challenging readers “to consider wars as interlocking rather than discrete and individual: this is particularly useful for disability historians across many regions and eras.”

Podcast Episode 41 – Disability, Adoption, Risk, and the Modern American Family

Sandy Sufian discusses her latest book, Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern America.

Episode Image: Cover of Familial Fitness by Sandra M. Sufian. The cover is white with an indigo blue newborn’s footprint on it. The footprint looks like the prints taken for birth certificates right after a baby is born.

Download mp3 file here.
Download pdf transcript here.

About our Guest

Sandy Sufian is a historian of medicine and disability at University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds joint appointments  in the Department of Medical Education in the College of Medicine (Health Humanities) and in the Department of Disability and Human Development in the College of Applied Health Sciences. She is cofounder of the Cystic Fibrosis Reproductive and Sexual Health Collaborative and serves on the editorial board of Disability Studies Quarterly. Her most recent book is Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern Americaa history of the adoption of children with disabilities in the US during the twentieth century.

Sandy studies how biological and contextual factors interact to shape disability and illness experiences. She centers patients’ voices in her research to best understand the complexity of their lives and their health status. She is specifically interested in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, chronic illness, family and kinship, and best-practices for patient-centered research outcomes. She teaches graduate and medical students about patient-centered and contextual care, social aspects of illness and disability, and the social and structural determinants of health.