Ithaca College

The Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability: Theoretical, Ethnohistorical, and Methodological Perspectives, co-edited by Jennifer F. Byrnes and Jennifer L. Muller, was released by Springer in July 2017. 

This interdisciplinary volume invites scholars from biological anthropology, medical anthropology, disability studies, physical therapy, archaeology, and history to tackle issues relevant to the study of disability within past cultures. The volume addresses disability as a social construct, and therefore, emphasizes the importance of careful cultural contextualization in our understandings of human biologies in the past. Included within the volume is a chapter authored by Muller, Rendered Unfit: “Defective” Children in the Erie County Poorhouse, which discusses the disabling of impoverished children in New York State’s historical social welfare system.