DHA Board of Directors
Penny L. Richards: Chairperson, DHA Board. Penny L. Richards is a research scholar affiliated with UCLA's Center for the Study of Women. She earned graduate degrees in Geography (MS, University of Wisconsin, 1990) and Education (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1996). Since 2001 Richards has co-edited H-Disability, an H-Net listserv for historians of disability. Richards' research interests include nineteenth-century American families and developmental disability, literary representations of disability, disability and immigration, and parental narratives.
Heather Munro Prescott, (prescott@ccsu.edu) Secretary. Heather Munro Prescott received her undergraduate degree in Comparative Religion, summa cum laude, from the University of Vermont in 1984. She received her M.A. (1989) and Ph.D. (1994) in Science & Technology Studies from Cornell University. She joined the faculty at CCSU in that year, where she has served as co-coordinator of Women’s Studies and as department chair. Her teaching and research interests include recent U.S. history, U.S. women’s history, and the history of medicine and public health. Now that she has completed her second book, Student Bodies: The Impact of Student Health on American Society and Medicine (Michigan, 2007), she begins a new project on the history of emergency contraception. She has held a number of fellowships, including one from the National Endowment for the Humanities and a National Institutes of Health Publication Grant from the National Library of Medicine. Her first book, A Doctor of Their Own: The History of Adolescent Medicine, (Harvard, 1998) received the Will Solimene Award of Excellence in Medical Communication from the New England Chapter, American Medical Writers Association.
Sandy Sufian: teaches history of medicine and disability at University of Illinois-Chicago School of Medicine. She has adjunct appointments in the Department of Disability and Human Development and the History Department at UIC as well. She is the author of Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947 (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and the co-editor of Reapproaching Borders: New Perspectives on the Study of Israel-Palestine (Rowman and Littlefield, 2007). She is the founder of the Global Network of Researchers on HIV/AIDS in the Middle East and North Africa.
Susan Burch: DHA Board Member Susan Burch teaches and studies American and Russian Deaf and Disability history. She currently teaches history at the University of Aberdeen [UK]. Her most recent book, co-authored with Hannah Joyner, is entitled Unspeakable: The Life Story of Junius Wilson (University of North Carolina Press, 2007). An anthology on Deaf and Disability Studies, co-edited with Alison Kafer, will be published with Gallaudet University Press. As the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of American Disability History (with Facts on File) Susan always is looking for more gifted authors. Please contact her if you're interesting in writing entries for this project.
Philip Ferguson (pferguson@chapman.edu) Treasurer. Phil is a professor in the College of Educational Studies at Chapman University in Orange, California. He is the author of a book on history of institutions for people with severe intellectual disabilities in the 19th and early 20th century, Abandoned to their fate: Social policy and practice toward severely disabled people, 1820 to 1820 (Temple Univ. Press, 1994) and a review of the history of professional portrayals of families of disabled children, “Mapping the family: Disability studies and the exploration of the parental response to disability” that appears in the Handbook of Disability Studies (Sage, 2001). He is a past president of the Society for Disability Studies. His current research focuses on the history of special education in the early 20th century.
Lindsey Parker (parker.619@osu.edu) Graduate Representative. Lindsey Parker, received her M.A. in Deaf Studies from Gallaudet University in 2007. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at The Ohio State University. She has published articles on gender and deaf identity and has contributed entries to the forthcoming Encyclopedia of American Disability History. Her current research interests include gender, disability, and citizenship in modern U.S. history.
Paul K. Longmore: DHA Board Member Paul K. Longmore, Professor of History and Director of the Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, specializes in Early American history and the history of people with disabilities. He earned his Ph.D. at the Claremont Graduate School and his B.A. and M.A. at Occidental College. Longmore's publications include The Invention of George Washington (University of California Press, 1988; pb. University Press of Virginia, 1998) and Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (Temple University Press, 2003). With Lauri Umansky, Longmore co-edited The New Disability History: American Perspectives (New York University Press, 2001), an anthology of essays, and is co-editing a book series, The History of Disability, for NYU Press. Longmore has also written articles in scholarly journals and newspapers on themes related to Early American history and to the history of people with disabilities and their contemporary civil rights struggle. He has taught at Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and the California Polytechnic University at Pomona.
Iain Hutchison (iain@keapub.fsnet.co.uk) UK Representative. Iain graduated with First Class Honours at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, in 2000 - his dissertation was on 'Child Disability in Scotland c.1872-1914'. He completed his PhD at the University of Strathclyde in 2004 with a thesis on 'The experience and representation of disability in nineteenth-century Scotland'. His book, A History of Disability in nineteenth-century Scotland, was published in 2007. Journal articles include
‘“…and rimmain yoor obeddeend omble zervand”: the invented spelling system of William Baillie of Dunain (1789-1869)’ with Nigel Fabb, Professor of Literary Linguistics, University of Strathclyde – Transactions of the Philological Society – 2005, Vol 103:3; and ‘Oralism – a sign of the times? The contest for deaf communication in late nineteenth century Scotland’ - European History Review – 2007, Vol:14:4.
He is a Teaching Fellow in History at the University of Stirling; and is Development Officer for the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland www.eshss.gcal.ac.uk
Catherine Kudlick: Immediate Past Chair of the DHA Board of Directors Catherine Kudlick is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis. In the area of disability history she has published a book (with Zina Weygand) Reflections: the Life and Writings of a Young Blind Woman in Post-Revolutionary France (NYU Press, 2001, French translation 2004) and a number of articles, the most important being “Disability History: Why We Need Another ‘Other’,” American Historical Review (June 2003). Her current research explores attitudes toward blind people and blindness in modern France and America. She served as a board member of the Society for Disability Studies 2003-2006