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Not Just Any Body: Disability, Gender, and History
- Journal of Women's History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 25, Number 4, Winter 2013
- pp. 122-137
- 10.1353/jowh.2013.0060
- Article
- Additional Information
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This article expands historical discussions of power and privilege by including disability as a central feature of our understanding of the past. Three primary foci frame this work. First, we seek to illustrate “disability” and “gender” as historically situated, co-constitutive concepts. As such, they carry specific values and ideas inextricably bound to broad societal forces. We also draw attention to disability and gender as entangled lived experiences. This approach responds to scholarly and societal tendencies to devalue and dislocate a spectrum of narratives and materials across eras and locations. Disability and gender as touchstones for critical analysis presents the final focus. Examples from U.S. eugenics and labor history illustrate these multiple dimensions. Engaging simultaneously with disability and gender ultimately expands methodological possibilities and historical understandings. This practice invites renewed self-reflection and imagination: what would our historical work be if it rigorously engaged with gender and disability?