How were disabilities understood and mediated in past eras? How does the representation of disability in the English-speaking world reflect the priorities and aims of Anglo-American colonialism and empire? What kind of disability histories do we need today? This advanced undergrad/grad course is a collective investigation into the constructions of disability in textual, material, and visual culture from the Early Modern period to the late Twentieth Century, with an emphasis on 19th-Century US and British sources. The culmination of the semester’s discussions and research will be a student-curated online and in-person exhibit housed at the Clements Library. Major secondary texts will include Lennard Davis’s Enforcing Normalcy, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson’s Extraordinary Bodies and Kim Nielsen’s A Disability History of the United States. We will also read primary texts by William Wordsworth, Samuel Gridley Howe, Harriet Martineau, Lydia A. Smith, and Robert Langdon Down, among others. Along the way, participants will have the chance to speak with visiting disability historians, activists, literary critics, curators, archivists, and scholars in the Public Humanities and Museum Studies to learn more about the stakes and challenges of doing historical and curatorial work. Graduate student participants will take the lead on various divisions of the final project, and read, review, and present on a recent book in the field.