Nicole Schroeder is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia. Her dissertation reviews the contested nature of physical disability in early America. She argues that negotiations surrounding health care, tax reform, and the nature of physical impairment created a foundational basis for a disabled identity. Disabled people petitioned the government for financial support, demanding that they take the role of proxy patriarch when kin structures failed. Collusion between government officials and doctors fed into a system of medicine that prioritized high turnover rates, a phenomenon reflected in today’s system. At the American Philosophical Society, she will be building databases for more than 5,000 pension records and medical records from the early 19th century. She will combine qualitative evidence from doctors, medical students, and various Philadelphians to provide a nuanced history of institutionalization. She will be researching various characters involved in health care reform across the early nineteenth century, including medical professionals, government bodies, and disabled individuals. Disabled people sought to legitimize their physical capabilities, pursued therapeutic treatment, resisted institutionalization, and maintained lives as fully participatory citizens, a phenomenon highlighted in Nicole’s research. Outside of her research, Nicole is involved in disability rights activism and advocacy.
Project: “Incurable Defects: Welfare, Medicine, and the Disabled Body in Philadelphia, 1790-1840”