Presents a powerful new vision of the history of science through the lens of disability studies.

Disability has been a central—if unacknowledged—force in the history of science, as in the scientific disciplines. Across historical epistemology and laboratory research, disability has been “good to think with”: an object of investigation made to yield generalizable truths. Yet disability is rarely imagined to be the source of expertise, especially the kind of expertise that produces (rational, neutral, universal) scientific knowledge.

This volume of Osiris places disability history and the history of science in conversation to foreground disability epistemologies, disabled scientists, and disability sciencing (engagement with scientific tools and processes). Looking beyond paradigms of medicalization and industrialization, the volume authors also examine knowledge production about disability from the ancient world to the present in fields ranging from mathematics to the social sciences, resulting in groundbreaking histories of taken-for-granted terms such as impairment, infirmity, epidemics, and shōgai.

Some contributors trace the disabling impacts of scientific theories and practices in the contexts of war, factory labor, insurance, and colonialism; others excavate racial and settler ableism in the history of scientific facts, protocols, and collections; still others query the boundaries between scientific, lay, and disability expertise. Contending that disability alters method, authors bring new sources and interpretation techniques to the history of science, overturn familiar narratives, apply disability analyses to established terms and archives, and discuss accessibility issues for disabled historians. The resulting volume announces a disability history of science.

Jaipreet Virdi is associate professor of history at the University of Delaware and co-chair of the Hagley Graduate Program in Capitalism, Technology, and Culture. Mara Mills is associate professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University and founding co-director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Sarah F. Rose is associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she founded and directs the UTA Disability Studies Minor.
 

INTRODUCTION
 
Disability, Epistemology, Sciencing
Mara Mills, Jaipreet Virdi, and Sarah F. Rose
 
ACCOUNTING FOR DISABILITY IN STATISTICS, DEMOGRAPHY, AND ACTUARIAL SCIENCE
 
The History of “Impairment”
Mara Mills and Dan Bouk
 
The Blind and Their Work in Mesopotamia in the Third and Second Millennia BCE
Eric J. Harvey
 
Enumerating Infirmity: Disability, Demography, and Empire, 1820–1950
Aparna Nair
 
“A Decided Inaptitude in His Constitution”: Race, Slavery, and Disability in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire
Suman Seth
 
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS
 
A “Most Remarkable Trait”: “Flathead” Skulls, Indigenous Pathologization, and Transinstitutionalization
Trevor Engel
 
Archaeology of the “Feebleminded”: In the Archives with Lee Swearengin
Susan Schweik
 
Visible Vowels and Listening Limbs: Assistive Erasure in Japanese Publics
Frank Mondelli
 
SCIENCES OF WORK/SCIENTIFIC WORKERS
 
Relational Disability and Invisible Illness in Industrial Britain
Coreen McGuire
 
“The Workmen’s Compensation Law Is a Direct Slap in the Face”: Industrial Medicine, Safety Engineering, and the Problem of Disabled Workers, 1910s–1940s
Sarah F. Rose
 
The Supercrip in the Lab: Seeking Disabled Scientists in the History of Science
Jessica Martucci
 
RETHINKING DISABILITY AND DISEASE IN THE EPIDEMIC SCIENCES
 
Carbolic Colonialism: Plague, Public Health, and Disability in British India
Jacob Steere-Williams
 
Building a Strong Nation: Smallpox and Smallpox Vaccinations in Meiji Japan
Wei Yu Wayne Tan
 
Disability Futures, Scientific Ableism, and the Making of Modern Epidemics
Beth Linker
 
A Syndrome in Search of a Virus: ME/CFS, Disease Paradigms, and the Social Function of Pathogens
Emily Lim Rogers
 
Notes on Contributors
Index