November 4, 2026, 12:30 PM - 4:30 PM
12:30p-1:15p - Meet and Greet
This informal get together offers students and faculty the opportunity to speak to Professor Altschuler. Her work focuses primarily on American literature and culture before 1865, disability studies, and the health humanities. She is eager to converse with members of the Niagara University community.
1:30p-2:45p - Lecture and Q&A (with snacks and refreshments)
Professor Altschuler will give a talk on American literature and disability, entitled "Before Disability: Blindness, Literacy, and Citizenship." I have pasted the abstract below.
In this talk, Sari Altschuler traces the history of disability rights in the US—from the wake of the American Revolution, when many of the differences we now call disabilities could be accommodated into citizenship, to the antebellum period, when disability was becoming a powerful, racialized tool of civic exclusion, to the end of the nineteenth century, when it was a target for eugenic elimination. Using the literary, legal, and cultural history of disability, race, and citizenship, Altschuler shows how disability helped to shape US citizenship and, in turn, how the formation of US citizenship shaped disability. The latter half of the talk will focus on these questions through the relationship of blindness and literacy.
3:00p-4:15p - Book Discussion
Professor Altschuler will discuss her new book, Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship (Penn Press, 2026). For those who would like a copy of the book, please email me and I can provide it. But reading it is not a requirement for attending.
These events are open and free to the public. All are welcome!