Disability History and African American Slavery

I will consider issues of lived experience and storytelling in disability history, particularly as it relates to research of disability and African American slavery. The primary source record of African American subjective voices is limited for any topic of slave experiences -­‐-­‐ how can we as historians effectively describe lived experiences with disability among 19th-­‐century African American slaves? To address this question, I will consider methodological questions, not just about uncovering the complex (but often hidden) history of disability among slaves in the primary record, but also about "reading" slaves' bodies, experiences, and subjectivites to construct useful narratives of their experience with disability. I also will consider the role of historians themselves in building such narratives, and the utility of microhistorical gazes and storytelling (building off a model set by John Demos in the Unredeemed Captain) in writing histories of disability.