Disability Studies: History

Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, and history of education. Provides selective indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955 as well as the full text of more than 300 journals and over 130 books.

Index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. The database indexes journals from 1964 to present and includes citations and links to book and media reviews.

Disabilities in Society, Seventeenth to Twentieth Century presents monographs (books), manuscripts, and ephemera that provide a historical view of disabilities from the seventeenth to twentieth century. The archive provides many avenues to approach disability history. It demonstrates how persons with disabilities have worked for equal rights through activism and advocacy. Some materials include personal memoirs of experiences with disabilities or the accounts of those who treated them. Rehabilitation, treatments, methods of education, and other forms of remediation are documented. Reports and proceedings of organizations and institutions that sought to help or heal those with disabilities are available for review. Policies and programs concerning persons with disabilities are also available (i.e. labor laws, legal rights, rehabilitation programs, etc.). Researchers can examine disability as a form of institutional discrimination and social exclusion as well as an empowered movement. Documentation shows how people deemed to be disabled were classified and treated, while some materials show how people have overcome physical or mental challenges in their lives and challenged perceptions of what it means to be disabled.