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Steven Noll traces the history and development of institutions for the mentally handicapped in the South between 1900 and 1940. He examines the influences of gender, race, and class in the institutionalization process and relates policies in the South to those in the North and Midwest, regions that had established similar institutions much earlier. In addition, Noll creates a vivid portrait of life and work within institutions and the impact of institutionalization on patients and their families. At the center of the story is the debate between the humanitarians, who advocated institutionalization as a way of protecting and ministering to the mentally deficient, and public policy adherents, who were primarily interested in controlling and isolating perceived deviants. According to Noll, these conflicting ideologies meant that most southern institutions were founded without a clear mission or an understanding of their relationship to southern society at large.
Pacific Colony, a Southern California institution established to care for the “feebleminded,” justified the incarceration, sterilization, and forced mutilation of some of the most vulnerable members of society from the 1920s through the 1950s. Institutional records document the convergence of ableism and racism in Pacific Colony. Analyzing a vast archive, Natalie Lira reveals how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the “Mexican race”—shaped decisions regarding the treatment and reproductive future of Mexican-origin patients. Laboratory of Deficiency documents the ways Mexican-origin people sought out creative resistance to institutional control and offers insight into how race, disability, and social deviance have been called upon to justify the confinement and reproductive constraint of certain individuals in the name of public health and progress.
In a challenge to current thinking about cognitive impairment, this book explores what it means to treat people with intellectual disabilities in an ethical manner. Reassessing philosophical views of intellectual disability, Licia Carlson shows how we can affirm the dignity and worth of intellectually disabled people first by ending comparisons to nonhuman animals and then by confronting our fears and discomforts. Carlson presents the complex history of ideas about cognitive disability, the treatment of intellectually disabled people, and social and cultural reactions to them. Sensitive and clearly argued, this book offers new insights on recent trends in disability studies and philosophy.
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* Selected as One of the Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times * * WINNER of the National Book Critics Circle Award * Books for a Better Life Award * The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year * This masterpiece by the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon features stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children, but also find profound meaning in doing so—“a brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity” (People). Solomon’s startling proposition in Far from the Tree is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families copin...
Pity, disgust, fear, cure, and prevention--all are words that Americans have used to make sense of what today we call intellectual disability. Inventing the Feeble Mind explores the history of this disability from its several identifications over the past 200 years: idiocy, imbecility, feeblemindedness, mental defect, mental deficiency, mental retardation, and most recently intellectual disability. Using institutional records, private correspondence, personal memories, and rare photographs, James Trent argues that the economic vulnerability of intellectually disabled people (and often their families), more than the claims made for their intellectual and social limitations, has shaped meaning, services, and policies in United States history.
In the first book to explore the theory and practice of eugenics in the American South, Edward Larson shows how the quest for "strong bloodlines" expressed itself in specific state laws and public policies from the Progressive Era through World War II. Presenting new evidence of race-based and gender-based eugenic practices in the past, Larson also explores issues that remain controversial today - including state control over sexuality and reproduction, the rights of disabled persons and of ethnic minorities, and the moral and legal questions raised by new discoveries in genetics and medicine. Larson shows how the seemingly broad-based eugenics movement was in fact a series of distinct campaigns for legislation at the state level - campaigns that could often be traced to the efforts of a small group of determined individuals. Explaining how these efforts shaped state policies, he places them within a broader cultural context by describing the workings of Southern state legislatures, the role played by such organizations as women's clubs, and the distinctly Southern cultural forces that helped or hindered the implementation of eugenic reforms.
Eugenic thought and practice swept the world from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in a remarkable transnational phenomenon. Eugenics informed social and scientific policy across the political spectrum, from liberal welfare measures in emerging social-democratic states to feminist ambitions for birth control, from public health campaigns to totalitarian dreams of the "perfectibility of man." This book dispels for uninitiated readers the automatic and apparently exclusive link between eugenics and the Holocaust. It is the first world history of eugenics and an indispensable core text for both teaching and research. Eugenics has accumulated generations of interest as experts at...
The history of contemporary genetic counseling, including its medical, personal, and ethical dimensions. Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL For sixty years genetic counselors have served as the messengers of important information about the risks, realities, and perceptions of genetic conditions. More than 2,500 certified genetic counselors in the United States work in clinics, community and teaching hospitals, public health departments, private biotech companies, and universities. Telling Genes considers the purpose of genetic counseling for twenty-first century families and society and places the field into its historical context. Genetic counselors educate p...
This book is about the life and work of David Milch, the writer who created NYPD Blue, Deadwood and a number of other important US television dramas. It provides a detailed account of Milch's journey from academia to the heights of the television industry, locating him within the traditions of achievement in American literature over the past in order to evaluate his contribution to fiction writing. It also draws on behind-the-scenes materials to analyse the significance of NYPD Blue, Deadwood, John From Cincinatti and Luck. Contributing to academic debates in film, television and literary studies on authorship, the book will be of interest to fans of Milch's work, as well as those engaged with the intersection between literature and popular television.