What was it like to be disabled before the era of curb cuts and accessible restrooms? Why should we care, and what does it tell us about how disabled people accessed the world in early America? Through an exploration of original artifacts from the scholar’s collection, participants will discuss what it was like to be disabled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Highlighting a topic that affects everyone at one point or another, this session will increase awareness of disability history and disability justice and activism in America today.

Nicole Belolan, PhD, is a consulting public historian based in the Philadelphia area. Belolan’s work on the material and visual culture of disability has appeared in publications ranging from Winterthur Portfolio to Pennsylvania Legacies. Belolan regularly consults on and advocates for access and inclusion for disabled people in public settings. She has worked for a variety of history and humanities organizations including the National Council on Public History and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers-Camden. Belolan is on the Board of the Disability History Association and collects disability material and visual culture. After earning her BA from Penn State, she earned an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and an MA in History and PhD in the History in American Civilization at the University of Delaware.

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This lecture is supported by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of the NEH’s “A More
Perfect Union” initiative.