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Douglas C. Baynton

American Cultural History
History of Disability
American Sign Language

Office: 310 Schaeffer Hall

Office Hours:
M / T 10:00-11:30AM
and by appointment

Tel: 319-335-2295

Email: douglas-baynton@uiowa.edu

Research

Teaching

Publications

Awards &
Service

Research

Doug Baynton has a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Doug's primary interest is the history of disability in the United States. His research and teaching explore how the cultural meanings of disabilities have changed over time, with particular interest in how the concept of disability can shed light on our understanding of such topics as nativism, eugenics, racial stereotyping, gender roles, and ideas of progress and decline, civilization and nature.

Doug’s first book, Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language (1996), is a cultural history of debates over American Sign Language and the meaning of deafness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  His second, Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History (2007), the companion volume to a PBS documentary film, explores and reinterprets American history from the perspective of the Deaf community.  He is the author of numerous articles on the history of disability and is currently writing a book on the concept of "defective persons" in the making of American immigration policy since the nineteenth century.

Doug serves on the Editorial Board of Sign Language Studies and Disability Studies Quarterly. He has served as a consultant and on-air commentator for an award-winning PBS documentary, "Through Deaf Eyes" and for a National Public Radio broadcast, "Beyond Affliction: The Disability History Project." He is currently an advisor for a PBS documentary film biography in development,"Becoming Helen Keller," and for the online Disability History Museum (disabilitymuseum.com).

Doug Baynton received his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1993.

Teaching

He teaches various classes on disability history and US nineteenth-century cultural history. He also teaches courses for advanced students in the American Sign Language Program.

  • 16A:051 Colloquium for History Majors (American)
  • 16A:104 /158:100 History of the American Deaf Community
  • 16A:106 American Cultural History, 1820 to 1920
  • 16:224 Seminar: History of Disability
  • 158:101 Topics in Deaf Studies
  • 158:111 American Sign Language Conversation

Publications

  • Defectives in the Land: Disability and American Immigration Law, 1882-1924 (book in progress)
  • Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
  • "Abraham Lincoln, Laurent Clerc, and the Design of the World," Sign Language Studies (forthcoming 2009)
  • "Beyond Culture: Deaf Studies and the Question of the Body" in Sightings: Explorations in Deaf Studies, edited by Dirksen Bauman and Ben Bahan (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
  • " 'The Undesirability of Admitting Deaf Mutes': American Immigration Policy and Deaf Immigrants, 1882-1924" in Sign Language Studies (2006)
  • "Defectives in the Land: Disability and American Immigration Policy, 1882-1924" in the Journal of American Ethnic History (Spring 2005)
  • "The Curious Death of Sign Language Studies in the Nineteenth Century" in The Study of Signed Languages (Gallaudet University Press, 2002)
  • "Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History" in The New Disability History: American Perspectives; edited by Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York University Press, 2001)

Awards & Service

  • Curriculum Development Award for Service Learning (2006-2007)
  • Faculty Scholar Award, University of Iowa (2003-2006)
  • Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant, University of Iowa (2001)
  • College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Summer Fellowship, University of Iowa (2000)
  • Central Investment Fund for Research Enhancement Grant, University of Iowa (2000)
  • Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant, University of Iowa (1999)
  • Old Gold Summer Fellowship, University of Iowa (1999)
  • Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Museum of American History (August 1997 - July 1998)
  • Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Research Seminar Fellowship, University of Iowa (June 10-26, 1997)
  • Irving T. Zola Emerging Scholar Award, Society for Disability Studies (1996)
© The University of Iowa
2005. All rights reserved.		 Department of History, 280 Schaeffer Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 52242. Tel: 319-335-2299. FAX: 319-335-2293.