Public Disability History

by Corrie Tijsseling The Dutch novelist Arthur Japin recently wrote a book with the title Kolja . “Kolja” was the pet name of Nikolaj Konradi (1868-1922), a Russian child who is said to have been born deaf and trained to speak. Or, as the author writes himself: “who was deaf-mute and who miraculously learned to speak”. Kolja was the pupil of Modest Tsjaikovski (1850-1916), the brother of the musician Pjotr Tsjaikovski (1840-1893). Modest was hired by the wealthy parents of Kolja as a guardian and supervised him during his education at the French school of doctor Jacques Hugentobler (1844-1924) in Lyon. Book cover: "Kolja" by Arthur Japin. “Deaf-mute” Arthur Japin is a renowned author and again managed to write a story that kept my attention till the last page. However, as a deaf historian who specializes in deaf education, I had my doubts when I started to read; would a hearing novelist be able to write an historically and politically correct story about a deaf per

by Cordula Nolte & Sabine Horn Dis/ability History as a Subject of Teaching and Learning: A Lab Report [german version] In recent years, we have seen many processes set in motion that share an aim to widen participation in society: inclusive schools and lessons, disabled access to public buildings, the media and educational and cultural events, dis/ability studies and dis/ability history as new, international research fields that have now also made their way into the German academic system. Hitherto, however, there has been little overlap between inclusive practice at schools and university-based dis/ability research in historical subjects such as history, archaeology, art history, literary history and language history. The obvious idea of linking the inclusion practised in history lessons with dis/ability as a topic, for example, has only been discussed occasionally in didactics, even though this approach would constitute “inclusive learning” in a double sense, both in regar