- Department of History
552 Park Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260-4130
fax: (716) 645-5954
email: marembis@buffalo.edu
UBCDS Website: https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/disability-studies.html
Michael Rembis
SUNY: University at Buffalo, History, Faculty Member
- Michael Rembis is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Disability S... moreMichael Rembis is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Rembis has authored or edited many books, articles, and book chapters, including: Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960 (University of Illinois Press, 2011 & 2013); Disability Histories co-edited with Susan Burch (University of Illinois Press, 2014); The Oxford Handbook of Disability History co-edited with Kim Nielsen and Catherine Kudlick (Oxford University Press, 2018); and Disabling Domesticity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). In 2012, Rembis and co-editor Kim Nielsen launched the Disability Histories book series with University of Illinois Press. His research interests include the history of institutionalization, mad people's history, and the history of eugenics. He is currently working on a book entitled, 'Writing Mad Lives - In the Age of the Asylum.'
Since completing a PhD in history, Rembis has worked with colleagues throughout the world to expand and solidify the fields of disability history and disability studies. He is a co-founder of the Disability Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona, where he helped to create undergraduate curricula in Disability Studies. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, where he participated in their Disability Studies Forum. In Buffalo, Rembis was fortunate to benefit from a close collaboration with David Gerber (Distinguished Professor of History [retired 2012/2014]). They worked together to expand the UB Center for Disability Studies (founded 2009) by creating a formal master's (MA) degree concentration in Disability Studies (2011) and a graduate certificate in Disability Studies (2014), as well as the Center's oral history project. Rembis has served on the American Historical Association's Committee on Disability and the Board of Directors of the Society for Disability Studies (2011-2014). He was elected Vice President of the Society for Disability Studies in 2013 and President in 2014. The Organization of American Historians honored Rembis by naming him a Distinguished Lecturer in 2014. In 2015, Rembis was named to the Fulbright Roster of Specialists.
Reviews of Defining Deviance:
"[Defining Deviance] is a small book about an important topic. Rembis provides a window into the quotidian workings of an institution designed for the social control of females labeled as deviant or defective. His examination of the interplay among patients, their families, and [the Illinois State Training School at] Geneva is both nuanced and thorough. . . .Rembis has produced a valuable work that bridges the gaps among scholars who study disability history, intellectual history, and public policy history."-American Historical Review
"Defining Deviance is a welcome addition to Disability Studies literature. Rembis's... gripping first-hand narratives coupled with compelling statistics. . . . robust research, careful methodology, and keen analyses make this book a worthwhile read. Most importantly, Rembis remains rooted in the historical accounts of the girls from [the Illinois State Training School at] Geneva throughout the book. He avoids facile theorizing, favoring instead the complexity of lived experience. In the end, this disquieting disability history calls for its readers to challenge the unchecked scientific dogmas of their own time."-Disability & Society
"An excellent history of the involuntary commitment of delinquent girls. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice
"[Defining Deviance] brings to life new material on the policing of adolescent female sexuality and provides a new perspective on the rise of the therapeutic state."--Social Service Review
"Rembis rightly and bravely uses the example of female delinquency to make sharp historical and contemporary analyses of eugenics and disability. The smart, analytical, and broad historical context Rembis provides will elicit marvelous student discussions of questions of gender, power, deviance, and historical change."--Kim E. Nielsen, author of Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship With Helen Kelleredit
Research Interests: Disability Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Disability policy, Disability History, Cultural Disability Studies, and 6 moreIntellectual Disability, History of Disability, Disability, Disability Rights, Politics and disability, and Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorders
Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where disabled people live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the... more
Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where disabled people live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the world--and it is also a history that helps define the fundamental concepts of identity, community, citizenship, and normality.
The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa. The twenty-seven articles, written by thirty experts from across the field, capture the diversity and liveliness of this emerging scholarship. Whether discussing disability in modern Chinese cinema or on the American antebellum stage, this collection provides new and valuable insights into the rich and varied lives of disabled people across time and place.
The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa. The twenty-seven articles, written by thirty experts from across the field, capture the diversity and liveliness of this emerging scholarship. Whether discussing disability in modern Chinese cinema or on the American antebellum stage, this collection provides new and valuable insights into the rich and varied lives of disabled people across time and place.
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Bringing together a range of authors from the multidisciplinary field of disability studies, this book uses disability and the experiences of disabled people living in the United States and Canada to explore and analyze dynamic sites of... more
Bringing together a range of authors from the multidisciplinary field of disability studies, this book uses disability and the experiences of disabled people living in the United States and Canada to explore and analyze dynamic sites of human interaction in both historical and contemporary contexts to provide readers with new ways of envisioning home, care, and family. Contributors to Disabling Domesticity focus on the varied domestic sites where intimate – and interdependent – human relations are formed and maintained. Analyzing domesticity through the lens of disability forces readers to think in new ways about family and household forms, care work, an ethic of care, reproductive labor, gendered and generational conflicts and cooperation, ageing, dependence, and local and global economies and political systems, in part by bringing the notion of interdependence, which undergirds all of the chapters in this book, into the foreground.
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A new classroom-oriented collection that reconsiders and redefines the field The field of disability history continues to evolve rapidly. In this collection, Susan Burch and Michael Rembis present essays that integrate critical analysis... more
A new classroom-oriented collection that reconsiders and redefines the field
The field of disability history continues to evolve rapidly. In this collection, Susan Burch and Michael Rembis present essays that integrate critical analysis of gender, race, historical context, and other factors to enrich and challenge the traditional modes of interpretation still dominating the field.
Contributors delve into four critical areas of study within disability history: family, community, and daily life; cultural histories; the relationship between disabled people and the medical field; and issues of citizenship, belonging, and normalcy. As the first collection of its kind in over a decade, Disability Histories not only brings readers up to date on scholarship within the field but fosters the process of moving it beyond the U.S. and Western Europe by offering work on Africa, South America, and Asia. The result is a broad range of readings that open new vistas for investigation and study while encouraging scholars at all levels to redraw the boundaries that delineate who and what is considered of historical value.
Informed and accessible, Disability Histories is essential for classrooms engaged in all facets of disability studies within and across disciplines.
"This book will be instantly recognized for what it is: a much-needed sampling of the best scholarship in a field that has grown tremendously over the past decade. It is a gem."--Lauri Umansky, coeditor of The New Disability History: American Perspectives
"A great resource for disability scholars and activists and a very good scholarly contribution. This is an important book."--Steve Noll, author of Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900–1940
"Invites readers from the public and academia to investigate the wider claim that disability is a construct central to society and scholarship as a whole. This collection will be welcomed by many."--Robert M. Buchanan, author of Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory, 1850–1950
The field of disability history continues to evolve rapidly. In this collection, Susan Burch and Michael Rembis present essays that integrate critical analysis of gender, race, historical context, and other factors to enrich and challenge the traditional modes of interpretation still dominating the field.
Contributors delve into four critical areas of study within disability history: family, community, and daily life; cultural histories; the relationship between disabled people and the medical field; and issues of citizenship, belonging, and normalcy. As the first collection of its kind in over a decade, Disability Histories not only brings readers up to date on scholarship within the field but fosters the process of moving it beyond the U.S. and Western Europe by offering work on Africa, South America, and Asia. The result is a broad range of readings that open new vistas for investigation and study while encouraging scholars at all levels to redraw the boundaries that delineate who and what is considered of historical value.
Informed and accessible, Disability Histories is essential for classrooms engaged in all facets of disability studies within and across disciplines.
"This book will be instantly recognized for what it is: a much-needed sampling of the best scholarship in a field that has grown tremendously over the past decade. It is a gem."--Lauri Umansky, coeditor of The New Disability History: American Perspectives
"A great resource for disability scholars and activists and a very good scholarly contribution. This is an important book."--Steve Noll, author of Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900–1940
"Invites readers from the public and academia to investigate the wider claim that disability is a construct central to society and scholarship as a whole. This collection will be welcomed by many."--Robert M. Buchanan, author of Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory, 1850–1950
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A historical study of the treatment of troubled girls, often perceived as threats to the American race Defining Deviance analyzes how reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries perceived delinquent girls and their... more
A historical study of the treatment of troubled girls, often perceived as threats to the American race
Defining Deviance analyzes how reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries perceived delinquent girls and their often troubled lives. Drawing on exclusive access to thousands of case files and other documents at the State Training School in Geneva, Illinois, Michael A. Rembis uses Illinois as a case study to show how implementation of involuntary commitment laws in the United States reflected eugenic thinking about juvenile delinquency.
Much more than an institutional history, Defining Deviance examines the cases of vulnerable young women to reveal the centrality of sex, class, gender, and disability in the formation of scientific and social reform. Rembis recounts the contestations between largely working-class teenage girls and the mostly female reformers and professionals who attempted to diagnose and treat them based on changing ideas of eugenics, gender, and impairment. He shows how generational roles and prevailing notions of gender and sexuality influenced reformers to restrict, control, and institutionalize undesirable "defectives" within society, and he details the girls' attempts to influence methods of diagnosis, discipline, and reform.
In tracing the historical evolution of ideologies of impairment and gender to show the central importance of gender to the construction of disability, Rembis reveals the larger national implications of the cases at the State Training School. His study provides new insights into the treatment of young women whom the dominant society perceived as threats to the sexual and eugenic purity of modern America.
"An excellent history of the involuntary commitment of delinquent girls. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice
"[Defining Deviance] brings to life new material on the policing of adolescent female sexuality and provides a new perspective on the rise of the therapeutic state."--Social Service Review
"Gripping first-hand narratives coupled with compelling statistics. . . . Rembis's robust research, careful methodology, and keen analyses make this book a worthwhile read."--Disability & Society
"Engaging. . . . careful and thoughtful scholarship."--The Annals of Iowa
"Michael A. Rembis rightly and bravely uses the example of female delinquency to make sharp historical and contemporary analyses of eugenics and disability. The smart, analytical, and broad historical context Rembis provides will elicit marvelous student discussions of questions of gender, power, deviance, and historical change."--Kim E. Nielsen, author of Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship With Helen Keller
Defining Deviance analyzes how reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries perceived delinquent girls and their often troubled lives. Drawing on exclusive access to thousands of case files and other documents at the State Training School in Geneva, Illinois, Michael A. Rembis uses Illinois as a case study to show how implementation of involuntary commitment laws in the United States reflected eugenic thinking about juvenile delinquency.
Much more than an institutional history, Defining Deviance examines the cases of vulnerable young women to reveal the centrality of sex, class, gender, and disability in the formation of scientific and social reform. Rembis recounts the contestations between largely working-class teenage girls and the mostly female reformers and professionals who attempted to diagnose and treat them based on changing ideas of eugenics, gender, and impairment. He shows how generational roles and prevailing notions of gender and sexuality influenced reformers to restrict, control, and institutionalize undesirable "defectives" within society, and he details the girls' attempts to influence methods of diagnosis, discipline, and reform.
In tracing the historical evolution of ideologies of impairment and gender to show the central importance of gender to the construction of disability, Rembis reveals the larger national implications of the cases at the State Training School. His study provides new insights into the treatment of young women whom the dominant society perceived as threats to the sexual and eugenic purity of modern America.
"An excellent history of the involuntary commitment of delinquent girls. . . . Highly recommended."--Choice
"[Defining Deviance] brings to life new material on the policing of adolescent female sexuality and provides a new perspective on the rise of the therapeutic state."--Social Service Review
"Gripping first-hand narratives coupled with compelling statistics. . . . Rembis's robust research, careful methodology, and keen analyses make this book a worthwhile read."--Disability & Society
"Engaging. . . . careful and thoughtful scholarship."--The Annals of Iowa
"Michael A. Rembis rightly and bravely uses the example of female delinquency to make sharp historical and contemporary analyses of eugenics and disability. The smart, analytical, and broad historical context Rembis provides will elicit marvelous student discussions of questions of gender, power, deviance, and historical change."--Kim E. Nielsen, author of Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship With Helen Keller
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This chapter focuses on the efforts of people who identify as users and survivors of psychiatric services and people living with psychosocial disabilities to combat the largely unchecked expansion of western, global north bio-psychiatry... more
This chapter focuses on the efforts of people who identify as users and survivors of psychiatric services and people living with psychosocial disabilities to combat the largely unchecked expansion of western, global north bio-psychiatry and take control of their own treatment and care. People who identified as users, survivors, and psychosocially disabled played a critical role in drafting the CRPD. Many of those same activists, as well as a growing global community of psychosocially disabled people, are using the CRPD to protect their human rights and to establish themselves as leaders of and participants in mounting efforts to re-define the expanding global mental health movement away from bio-psychiatry toward peer support and other, more holistic, justice oriented, sustainable interventions.
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A new book chapter that is a short history of modern medicine and disability. Great for undergraduates, people new to the field, and general readers.
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In the early 1970s, following the incarceration of a number of political prisoners, French philosopher Michel Foucault and others formed the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP) to investigate and make known the intolerable French... more
In the early 1970s, following the incarceration of a number of political prisoners, French philosopher Michel Foucault and others formed the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP) to investigate and make known the intolerable French prison system. Foucault and his friends and colleagues used ‘the investigation’ as a means of documenting and publicizing both the deplorable material conditions within the French prison system, and the intolerability of ‘prison’ as an organizing concept within French society. Drawing on a rich cache of newly translated documents, this chapter builds on existing scholarship by using the history of the GIP in the early 1970s to interrogate the role of the poststructuralist-postmodernist intellectual in creating gendered and ableist constructions of mad and incarcerated subjects. It argues that intellectual–organizers working in the 21st century need to challenge the legacies of a liberal political tradition that does not question its own gendered and ableist roots.
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This chapter reviews three special journal issues that appeared in 2017, each of which takes up important considerations of disability and care. It is divided into five sections: 1. Analytical Foundations; 2. Caregivers; 3. Mutual and... more
This chapter reviews three special journal issues that appeared in 2017, each of which takes up important considerations of disability and care. It is divided into five sections: 1. Analytical Foundations; 2. Caregivers; 3. Mutual and Inter-Dependencies; 4. Care Receivers; 5. Conclusions. The articles reviewed here engage with physical, sensory, developmental or intellectual disabilities, and mental disabilities, including people living on the autism spectrum and mad people. Nearly all of the authors assume the role of 'caregiver', with two notable exceptions, both of whom identify as mad, living with some form of mental illness or as a psychiatric survivor. Notably absent from the work reviewed here is any discussion of disabled people as providers of care, either to their own children or to others. The work discussed here engages primarily with the relationship between care work and other forms of work, including academic work and other forms of writing. The notable exception is the special issue of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, which focuses largely on survivors of institutionalization. Despite its apparent limitations, the work gathered here critiques more traditional notions of care and care work, while also expanding feminist and queer theorizations of care work.
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Eugenics is central to the history of disability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recently, scholars in a number of disciplines have debated whether the biopolitical regime that emerged in the waning decades of the twentieth... more
Eugenics is central to the history of disability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recently, scholars in a number of disciplines have debated whether the biopolitical regime that emerged in the waning decades of the twentieth century can be called “eugenic.” Some scholars claim that although distinctions can be made between an “old” eugenics (1860s–1950s) and a “new” eugenics (1960s–present), the basic tenets of eugenics have endured. Other scholars, Nikolas Rose being the most prominent among them, assert that the biopolitics at the turn of the twenty-first century is significantly different from the “old” eugenics and must be analyzed on its own terms. The question of whether one can write a “long” history of eugenics has animated a lively debate among historians. When viewed through the lens of disability, important continuities emerge between the history of eugenics and the current biopolitical regime.
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Disability history has many strengths as well as aspects that require further investigation. The field of disability history is capacious, primarily because “disability” itself is difficult to define. Notions of disability change over... more
Disability history has many strengths as well as aspects that require further investigation. The field of disability history is capacious, primarily because “disability” itself is difficult to define. Notions of disability change over time and vary from culture to culture. Yet, important commonalities exist. The twenty-seven chapters contained within the Handbook help to create a methodological and historiographic foundation for a field that, while it continues to evolve, is critical to explaining the human experience and holds tremendous import for other areas of historical study. The Handbook provides students and researchers at many levels with a well-informed basis from which to explore their own interests.
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In my two essays previously published in this journal, I used key concepts in disability studies, namely ‘normality’ and ‘citizenship’, to organize my review of new work in the field. I intend to use a similar organizing strategy in this... more
In my two essays previously published in this journal, I used key concepts in disability studies, namely ‘normality’ and ‘citizenship’, to organize my review of new work in the field. I intend to use a similar organizing strategy in this year’s essay, in which I focus on publications that make ‘work’ a central theme of their investigation. ‘Work’, in its most basic sense—waged labour—as well as in its broader theorizations has, understandably, been a central concern for disability studies scholars in a number of seemingly divergent disciplines for many years; 2016 was no exception. In what follows, I review five books, two of which are edited anthologies, one containing thirty-seven essays, and the other comprised of seven contributions. The remaining three publications reviewed in this essay are single-authored monographs. One of the books reviewed here is Shaun Grech and Karen Soldatic’s Disability in the Global South: The Critical Handbook (Springer [2016]). The other four books reviewed below focus on the United States and Britain.
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Bringing together a range of authors from the multidisciplinary field of disability studies, this book uses disability and the experiences of disabled people living in the United States and Canada to explore and analyze dynamic sites of... more
Bringing together a range of authors from the multidisciplinary field of disability studies, this book uses disability and the experiences of disabled people living in the United States and Canada to explore and analyze dynamic sites of human interaction in both historical and contemporary contexts to provide readers with new ways of envisioning home, care, and family. Contributors to Disabling Domesticity focus on the varied domestic sites where intimate – and interdependent – human relations are formed and maintained. Analyzing domesticity through the lens of disability forces readers to think in new ways about family and household forms, care work, an ethic of care, reproductive labor, gendered and generational conflicts and cooperation, ageing, dependence, and local and global economies and political systems, in part by bringing the notion of interdependence, which undergirds all of the chapters in this book, into the foreground.
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In last year’s article [2015] in this same journal, I discussed various theorizations of ‘normal’, ‘normality’, and more specifically, Lennard Davis’ assertion that we are witnessing the ‘end of normal’. Ideas about normality have formed a... more
In last year’s article [2015] in this same journal, I discussed various theorizations of ‘normal’, ‘normality’, and more specifically, Lennard Davis’ assertion that we are witnessing the ‘end of normal’. Ideas about normality have formed a core concept upon which disability studies work has been built for decades. The authors I consider in this review article take on an equally important and no less capacious or fraught concept: citizenship. Or as Hirschmann and Linker, and their authors (Civil Disabilities, reviewed below) think of it: citizenship, membership, and belonging. In an effort to follow my own advice and decentre scholarship emerging out of the global North, I will begin the review in Guatemala with Shaun Grech’s innovative and powerful Disability and Poverty in the Global South: Renegotiating Development in Guatemala.
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In this essay, Rembis and Pamuła explore the state of the field of disability studies, making special note of its relevance to the study of disability in Poland. Special consideration is given to the critical importance of the dialectical... more
In this essay, Rembis and Pamuła explore the state of the field of disability studies, making special note of its relevance to the study of disability in Poland. Special consideration is given to the critical importance of the dialectical relationship between disability activism and lived experiences and the growth of disability studies as an academic field. Disability and disability rights have become global concerns. Since the 1970s, disabled activists and their allies in countries around the world have been working to redefine disability and secure the rights of disabled people. The disability rights movement has consisted of direct action protests, legal challenges, advocacy, and education. An outgrowth of this diverse movement has been the rise of the interdisciplinary field of disability studies. In this essay, we will offer a brief overview of disability studies, highlighting the importance of the “social model” of disability and the critiques it has engendered. We will then turn to a discussion of “global disability studies,” focusing specifically on Poland, revealing the fruitful ways in which insights from the humanities can be brought to bear on the lived experiences and filmic and literary representations of disability and disabled people.
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Print Version: In this article, I review seven books published in disability studies in 2013 and 2014. Two of the books deal exclusively with the North American context. The remaining five books focus primarily on areas outside North... more
Print Version: In this article, I review seven books published in disability studies in 2013 and 2014. Two of the books deal exclusively with the North American context. The remaining five books focus primarily on areas outside North America, including Europe, Asia and Latin America. Two of the books are edited anthologies of new and original work. Four books are single-authored monographs and one book is co-authored. A search of new work published in 2013 and 2014 revealed more than twenty books.
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In this article, I review seven books published in disability studies in 2013 and 2014. Two of the books deal exclusively with the North American context. The remaining five books focus primarily on areas outside North America, including... more
In this article, I review seven books published in disability studies in 2013 and 2014. Two of the books deal exclusively with the North American context. The remaining five books focus primarily on areas outside North America, including Europe, Asia and Latin America. Two of the books are edited anthologies of new and original work. Four books are single-authored monographs and one book is co-authored. A search of new work published in 2013 and 2014 revealed more than twenty books. As a way of narrowing the focus and organizing the essay, I begin with a critique of key issues raised in Lennard J. Davis’ The End of Normal: Identity in a Biocultural Era (UMichiganP [2013]) and go on to show how authors living and/or working in other parts of the world are engaging with, building on and diverging from what could be called a white, Western global North disability studies. In the end, I argue that decentring North American and UK disability studies reveals significant field-changing insights that will no doubt have profound and lasting effects on the study of disability and disabled people in the humanities and social sciences.