2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Rehabilitation is a medical, social, and cultural process.  Programs to rehabilitate those considered physically, socially and morally debilitated and disabled evolved over the course of the 20^th century in response to a range of perceived social problems and crises: colonial care and education of indigenous peoples, the problem of industrial injury, nervous exhaustion, moral panic over juvenile delinquency, eugenic concerns regarding degeneration, and the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers. Multi-disciplinary in its application, the concept of rehabilitation engaged, at various times and in various contexts, programs for vocational (re-) education, psychiatric social work, occupational therapy and physical/manual training.  A common thread within such wide-ranging rehabilitation regimes is the deployment of therapeutic arts and crafts. Women commonly engaged in therapeutic craft as patients, and they constituted a large majority of the instructors and clinicians engaged in such rehabilitation regimes. Underexplored historically, such programs reveal the intersections of gender, race, class in the production and purveyance of handicrafts as a therapeutic tool. Our papers explore the definitions of “health” and “well-being” in handicraft rehabilitation programs, as we also assess the making of and the value assigned to these objects of therapy, both in the hospital and beyond. Drawing upon histories from Canada, the United States, Sweden and New Zealand, this panel engages researchers in the question: How do handicraft programs reveal changing notions of productive citizenship in various national contexts, and the changing social and clinical perceptions of creativity as rehabilitative?