The Robert Bogden Disability Archive

The Robert Bogden Disability Archive at Yale University aims to personalize the discipline of Disability Studies, and gives much needed history and context to our modern-day understanding of disability. Drawing on this lack of auto-biographical material and accounts, the Archive is one of the few spots we can see in modern history where disabled people are pictured just as they are, without outside commentary. While there is already a wealth of literature on Disability Studies, the Robert Bogden Archive aims to populate the discipline with the voices and faces of the people whose daily lives were influenced by disability. 

Within the academic literature that does mention disabled people as activists, members of the community, or simply citizens, there is still see a gap where specific people are not named or acknowledged. The Disability Rights Movement was a largely grassroots effort, but much of the literature about this subject does not reflect that. The exclusion of specific names and groups of activists omits an entire viewpoint and strays from the message of the field as a whole. We cannot simultaneously talk about this community while also silencing them through either omission of their names or suppression of their experiences and feelings. By showing the faces and bodies of disabled people in photographs, The Robert Bogden Disability Archive can help to restore a sense of presence and get rid of anonymity.

In recent years, we have seen evidence of increased attempts to bring back these silenced voices. The Netflix documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, as well as the new book Golem Girl, by artist and activist Riva Lehrer, both have begun to bring the voices of the community to the forefront of this conversation. Even children’s literature has started to recognize that representation of children with disabilities is important; Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, a disability rights activist, worked with authors and illustrators to publish All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything early in 2020. But, these works exist largely in the public sphere. Introduction of disabled voices in the academic sphere is still needed in order to gain a full picture of our past to plan our future. 

To begin to introduce the voices of people with disabilities into Disability Studies, primary documents by and about this marginalized community are a necessity. Making the Robert Bogden Disability Archive, located at Yale University's Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, part of Disability Studies and the wider public knowledge will bring the much-needed human aspect into this area of study. Robert Bogden, Professor Emeritus of Social Science and Education at Syracuse University, began collecting materials for this archive in the early 1980s in order to introduce a “broad Disability Studies approach” into the archival world. The Archive contains primary sources ranging from 1820-1990, including the advent of the Disability Rights Movement in the 1970s, and was acquiesced by Yale in 2018. Professor Bogden’s collection is widely composed of ephemera such as postcards, pamphlets, and even collected family photo albums of people with disabilities. Being able to see the faces of these people and examine intimate details of their lives would begin to introduce the voices of real people into wider Disability Studies. 

In addition to the Archive, Professor Bogden has written two books dealing with disability: Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit and Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen, and Other Photographic Rhetoric. The latter focuses specifically on images of disability from 1860-1970, and aims to investigate the way disability is literally viewed. Images in this book range from pictures of sideshow attractions to medical photographs. This book would be a fantastic read for someone who is interested in learning not only about Professor Bogden’s work and seeing the images, but also the history of how disability has been represented in our culture. 

It is important to also state that with a study of the Bogden Archives, the Disability Studies sphere will still not be complete. Other archives, voices, and perspectives need to be included but this examination will hopefully spur a larger effort to find more sources like these. In order to obtain a full and truthful picture of the past, present, and future of the Disability Rights Movement and Disability Studies, we need the perspectives of the people who began all of these actions, which are found in primary and personal sources in places like the Robert Bogden Disability Archive.

1. Bay Pimentel, Annette, and Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins. All the Way to the Top: How One Girl's Fight for Americans With Disabilities Changed Everything. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Inc, 2020. 
2. Hickner, Andy. The Robert Bogdan Disability Collection, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library. January 30th 2018. Accessed November 20th 2020. https://library.medicine.yale.edu/blog/medical-historical-library-news/robert-bogdan-disability-collection.
3.  Lebrecht, James and Nicole Newnham, dir. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution. Higher Ground Productions, 2020. 
4. Lehrer, Riva. Golem Girl. New York, NY: One World, 2020. 
5. Robert Bogdan Disability Collection. John Hay Whitney Medical Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/10/resources/11039 Accessed November 05, 2020.
6. Bogdan, Robert. Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen, and Other Photographic Rhetoric. New York, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012.
7. Roquemore, Katie. "Convergence of Inclusive Education and Disability Studies: A Critical Framework." In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, by Michael Peters. Springer Science+Business Media, 2017. http://ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sprepat/convergence_of_inclusive_education_and_disability_studies_a_critical_framework/0?institutionId=1177.