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

June 01 - 04, 2017

During the twentieth century, United States policymakers, bureaucrats, reformers, and citizens often viewed disability as a problem to be solved. This perception frequently centered on dominant views of “appropriate” gendered behavior and “healthy” families. This session aims to further conversations about how the U.S. state’s responses to disability at times reflected and reinforced contemporary understandings of gender, race, class, and sexuality and at other times challenged the dominant paradigms state actors hoped to uphold in addressing the problem of disability. Responding to the conference’s theme, this session will examine the interplay between state power and disability across the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the state’s role in shaping experiences of and ideas about disability while also highlighting how those experiences and ideas shaped state policy. As a starting point, presenters will analyze three moments when the state sought to address disability—through the Social Security Act of 1935 and services for disabled children, through the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1954 and efforts to assist disabled women in fulfilling their domestic duties, and in the welfare reform policies of the middle 1990s and their legacies through 2016. The presenters and session chair and commenter seek to spark conversations about the interconnectedness and significance of gender and disability, along with race, class, and sexuality, in shaping state growth.