"US Nationalism and the Threat of the 'Improperly' Developed: The Cultural Politics of Developmental Disabilities and Global Development." Friday, March 2, 12-1pm, MGH 024
Presenter: Ronnie Thibault, IPhD Studies in Geography, Communication, and Disability Studies
Title: US Nationalism and the Threat of the 'Improperly' Developed: The Cultural Politics of Developmental Disabilities and Global Development. Friday, March 2, 12-1pm, MGH 024
When: Friday, March 2, 12-1pm
Where: UW D Center (MGH 024)
Abstract:
In this digital humanities project, I explore discourses of developmental and intellectual disabilities in the United States and examine the relations between their cultural representation in early twentieth-century American nationalist ideologies of race-purity, national prosperity and ‘properly developed’ citizens—and global development representational discourses that formed during the emergence of the Cold War Era. I analyze government, agency, media, and public archives and explore how nationalist ideologies and charity discourses that framed developmental disabilities during the Progressive Era (1890-1930) informed American Cold War Globalism and humanitarian discourses (1947-1977) of ‘improperly developed’ individuals, cultures, nations, and geographies. The prevalent use of imagery and texts that frame individuals and regions in the global South as primitive, backward, and improperly developed are controversial tactics that have flourished throughout the past seven decades. NPOs, government agencies, media, and private industry in the United States today also rely heavily on stereotypes of fear, pity, and the failure of inadequate progress to grab consumer attention and solicit financial backing for developmental and intellectual disability-related causes. While exploring early twentieth-century cultural archives I located images, texts and documents where the ‘feebleminded threat’ was repeatedly inscribed onto gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion as a mechanism for excluding ‘other’ populations from the national vision of authentic Americanness’—a tactic that I argue set the stage for Cold War American Globalism and contemporary global development strategies. This is an ongoing digitally interactive project that includes a digital map of cultural and historical objects and an interactive academic site developed in the Scalar II digital scholarship platform.
Accessibility information:
CART captioning and ASL interpretation have been requested for this event. The D Center is mobility-aid accessible and is a scent-free space.
This project is supported in part by an award from the Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund in Disability Studies. For more information about the awards and the upcoming deadline to apply, please go to the DS Program website: https://disabilitystudies.washington.edu/HarlanHahnFund
Contact info: Jose Alaniz, jos23@uw.edu
