ABSTRACT
Writing history is not merely an enterprise of compiling facts and creating records of “what happened.” Histories are interpretations that refl ect the perspectives and beliefs of the historian. Historians make decisions of what to include in their works and how to organize events to tell a story. Readers also interpret histories through their particular cultural and social contexts. Although people with disabilities have always existed, they are oft en absent in histories we write. When disability is noted, it is described as personal tragedy or insult, rather than as an aspect of culture to be explored (Baynton, 2001 ). Historians in disability studies instead propose that disability “sit[s] squarely at the center of historical inquiry, both as a subject worth studying in its own right and as one that will provide scholars with a new analytic tool” for understanding human relations (Kudlick, 2003 : 2-3).
