Epilepsy and Me, published at Wellcome Stories
“Aparna Nair is one of 50 million people living with epilepsy. Here she tries to make sense of her personal experience of epilepsy by looking back at the history of a condition that is full of contradictions. It’s an illness of the brain and nervous system, yet its defining symptom, seizures, can be unforgivingly physical and happen in the most public of places. It was once associated with the supernatural but it’s diagnosis today is dependent on modern technology. People with epilepsy have been stigmatised by both science and religion in the past, but for Aparna, comfort and support has come from an unexpected ally.”
Public Health Campaigns and the ‘Threat’ of Disability, published at Wellcome Stories
“Public health has, historically, had an uneasy relationship to disability. Many disabled people have experienced public health campaigns and services as disenfranchising and discriminatory. Public health has tended to work from within the medical model of disability, which pathologises disability as a medical and individual problem needing cure, prevention or rehabilitation. Recent work in disability studies has critiqued the medical model of disability, pointing out the importance of the social, cultural and institutional factors that shape experiences of disability. But public health campaigns, past and present, draw on and reinforce wider social prejudices about disability to deliver their message, and are often ableist, biased towards able-bodied people.”
“WASH YOUR HANDS, OFFICER X”, published at All Of Us
“There is perhaps no more apposite moment to remember the story of Isaac Woodard, Jr. (1919-1992) than the one we find ourselves in now. In the midst of a devastating pandemic that has disproportionately impacted the Black and disabled population in the United States, waves of protests against systemic racism, police violence, and the carceral state have erupted across the country and the world. The corporeal consequences of these forces for Black people have historically been both significant and tangible. As Woodard’s life demonstrates so vividly.
Born after the end of the First World War on a farm in Fairfield County, South Carolina, Isaac Woodard, Jr. came from a family of landless sharecroppers. Woodard worked hard manual jobs from a very young age to support his family, as did his siblings. In 1942, he joined the army and served in the Pacific theatre of the war. He won promotions and earned the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal as well as a battle star for unloading ships under enemy fire….”
“HIS DOG IS HIS ‘EYE’”: THE GUIDE DOG IN PUBLIC SPACES AND TRANSIT, 1930-1970, published at All Of Us
“One year before the turmoil of World War II, the blind advocate for guide dogs Hazel Hurst arrived in the United Kingdom aboard the liner American Merchant. She did not stay long, however, departing the country after spending “just ten minutes on English soil,” when the British government banned her guide dog Babe from disembarking with her handler without “first undergoing the usual six months quarantine,” despite the fact it had been vaccinated against rabies.2 “It would be like leaving my eyes behind me,” she told newspapers; ‘”It is the first time in my life I have felt blind. I don’t feel safe being guided by a human being.”3 Hazel’s experience of traveling with Babe will be familiar to many disabled people with service animals today. As I write this, my faithful Charlie (pictured below) lies next to me, tired from a long day at the university. Over the past two years, Charlie has alerted me to auras, and seizures, preventing injury, concussion or worse. I cannot imagine surviving the past few years without his presence. Yet, I have also confronted deep seated misconceptions about what service animals do for disabled handlers, confusions over service and support animals and questions about the roles of service animals in public spaces, especially while travelling….”
Of 3D Livers and Laser-Printed Lungs: Teaching with Pop-Up Exhibits, published at Recommended Dose
“The challenge here was three-fold: first, to decolonize students’ fundamental understanding of medicine, illness and the body in general. Second, I wanted them to connect to the worlds, theories and practices of non-Western and indigenous medicine beyond the limits of the lecture and readings. Third, I wanted to give them opportunities to develop and practice the research and critical thinking skills we want to inculcate in any student who takes a history of medicine class.”
“The Joy of My Life”: Seeing-Eye Dogs, Disabled Veterans/Civilians and WWI,’ published at NursingClio
“The independence that blind handlers received through their dogs was undoubtedly the biggest reward of these programs. Dogs functioned as intelligent and trained conduits between the Blind and the rest of the world, and their blind handlers were no longer dependent on their families or on human guides to navigate the world. Morris Frank, of the New Jersey Seeing-Eye Institute, had traveled across the US his guide dog and said of her: “Buddy has signed my Declaration of Independence.””
“Hateful, Un-American Ideas!” Gender, Race, and Politics in Cold War Romance Comic Books” published at NursingClio
In the October 1949 issue of the romance comic Hollywood Confessions, the protagonist of the story “Too Ugly to Love” describes himself as so ugly that he resembles a “menace from a horror picture.”1 Jon Koslo has “accepted … [his] ugliness philosophically!” when a film producer spots him and “exploits [his] ugliness” by giving him a role as a villain in a movie. Disturbed by his new circumstances and spurned by the women around him who call him a “freak,” Joe finds comfort and companionship in Gina. When Joe is burnt beyond recognition in a fire, Gina stays by his side. Plastic surgery and the skill of a doctor transform Joe’s appearance, and the story ends with the two protagonists looking to a happy future.
From Mooktie to Juan: The Eugenic Origins of the “Defective Immigrant” published at NursingClio
On a Monday in November 1905, a “little deaf and dumb … 10-year old Eurasian girl” called Mooktie Wood arrived in the US on the steamship Canopic. An orphan with no known relatives, Mooktie had been “picked up” by an American Pentecostal missionary, Lillian Sprague, in the wake of one of the many devastating famines that swept through British India.1 Sprague had made public appeals to educate Mooktie in a US school for the deaf; arrangements had eventually been made for her to attend Edgewood Park in Pittsburgh.
Documenting the Vayattati: A Digitised Oral History Project
In 2011, I spent eight months working in the archives and in the field, collecting oral histories, archive materials, photographs and other research materials from traditional birth attendants and post-birth attendants across the southern Indian state of Kerala. The project had the following goals:
To develop and conduct an oral history project which will preserve and protect the body of indigenous knowledge brought to bear during childbirth in Kerala.
To provide a diverse, integrated and easy-to-use body of sources for the use of interested scholars, students and the interested public.
This digital and publicly available oral history project examines the work, role and consequences of the labour of traditional birth attendants in a state where birth is extensively medicalised. I also examine the powerful roles of caste and income in driving the forms of this labour, and the ways in which it has re-emerged in a post-medicalisation Kerala. The project seeks to center the voices of the women who shared so much of their working life with me, and to assign them a respectful place in both the history of medicine and the history of post-natal nursing in the state.
You can access the entire project here: http://www.rcwssndt.org/awa/collection/awa%20Collection%20aparna.html