Making Disability Modern: Design Histories

Product Description

Making Disability Modern- Design Histories brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary and national perspectives to examine how designed objects and spaces contributes to the meanings of ability and disability from the late 18th century to the present day, and in homes, offices, and schools to realms of national and international politics. The contributors reveal the social role of objects - particularly those designed for use by people with disabilities, such as walking sticks, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs - and consider the active role that makers, users and designers take to reshape the material environment into a usable world. But it also aims to make clear that definitions of disability and ability are often shaped by design.Making Disability Modern- Design Histories brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary and national perspectives to examine how designed objects and spaces contributes to the meanings of ability and disability from the late 18th century to the present day, and in homes, offices, and schools to realms of national and international politics. The contributors reveal the social role of objects - particularly those designed for use by people with disabilities, such as walking sticks, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs - and consider the active role that makers, users and designers take to reshape the material environment into a usable world. But it also aims to make clear that definitions of disability and ability are often shaped by design.
Elizabeth Guffey is the Juanita and Joseph Leff Distinguished Professor at Purchase College, State University of New York. Founding Editor of the journal Design and Culture, she is also the author of Retro- The Culture of Revival and Posters- A Global History. Her most recent book is Designing Disability- Symbols, Spaces, and Society (Bloomsbury 2017).
Bess Williamson is Assistant Professor of Design History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches courses on modern and contemporary design in relation to politics and social change. Her book, Designing an Accessible America- A History of Design and Disability in the United States, describes the role of design in the U.S. Disability Rights cause of the last half of the 20th century.