NYU Press The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public: 3 (The History of Disability)

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, municipal laws targeting 'unsightly beggars' sprang up in cities across America. Seeming to criminalize disability and thus offering a visceral example of discrimination, these 'ugly laws' have become a sort of shorthand for oppression in disability studies, law and the arts. In this watershed study of the ugly laws, Susan M. Schweik uncovers the murky history behind the laws, situating the varied legislation in its historical context and exploring in detail what the laws meant. Illustrating how the laws join the history of the disabled and the poor, Schweik not only gives the reader a deeper understanding of the ugly laws and the cities where they were generated, she locates the laws at a crucial intersection of evolving and unstable concepts of race, nation, sex, class, and gender. Moreover, she explores the history of resistance to the ordinances, using the often harrowing life stories of those most affected by their passage. Moving to the laws' more recent history, Schweik analyzes the shifting cultural memory of the ugly laws, examining how they have been used - and misused - by academics, activists, artists, lawyers, and legislators. Drawing from a huge range of cultural materials, from police reports and court dockets to popular fiction and reformist exposes, Schweik rewrites an urban legend about disability into a meticulously researched and powerfully reasoned argument about law, politics, and cultural aesthetics. Building a case in ever expanding circles until she is in a position to rethink large swaths of United States culture through the lens of the ugly laws, Schweik casts a bright light on the conditions of disability at the turn of the century in order to better understand disability in the present. Review "Schweik delivers a compelling and insightful examination of disability norms, municipal law, and American culture... She gives voice to the fascinating stories of the unsightly, the alienated, and the excluded. A valuable contribution for anyone interested in disability theory, poverty law and policy, and social history." --Paul Steven Miller, Director, Disability Studies Program, University of Washington"The book is beautifully written, delightfully thought-provoking, and deeply researched. It is quite honestly the best work of scholarship I have read in a long time." --Douglas C. Baynton, author of Forbidden Signs About the Author Susan M. Schweik is Professor of English and co-director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of A Gulf So Deeply Cut: American Women Poets and the Second World War.