| FEL-295057-24 | Research Programs: Fellowships | Katherine Elizabeth Sorrels, PhD | On the Spectrum: Refugees from Nazi Austria and the Politics of Disability and Belonging in Britain and America | 8/1/2024 - 7/31/2025 | $60,000.00 | Katherine | Elizabeth | Sorrels | | | | University of Cincinnati | Cincinnati | OH | 45220-2872 | USA | 2023 | European History | Fellowships | Research Programs | 60000 | 0 | 60000 | 0 | Research and writing leading to a book on the history of the Camphill School movement and its role in the international disability rights movement.
My proposal is for a book on a network of intentional communities for intellectually disabled children and adults called Camphill. It was founded by doctors who fled Nazi Austria for Scotland, and it soon grew into an international movement due in part to the way its founders subverted norms in disability care: they integrated disabled people into their own family households and stressed communal learning, work, and social life. This approach, while popular with parents of disabled people, was suspect among mainstream medical professionals and state overseers. Conflict ensued, with disabled people caught in the middle. Based on oral history interviews and extensive archival research, I reconstruct the movement’s history and its entanglements with some of the twentieth century’s defining events and cultural currents, including the Holocaust, mass migrations, the emergence of the counterculture, sectarian rifts in medicine, and the growth of the disabled people’s movement. |
| FT-270278-20 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Katherine Elizabeth Sorrels, PhD | Disability, Jewishness, and Belonging: A History of the Camphill Special School Movement in Postwar Britain and America | 5/15/2020 - 7/15/2020 | $6,000.00 | Katherine | Elizabeth | Sorrels | | | | University of Cincinnati | Cincinnati | OH | 45220-2872 | USA | 2020 | European History | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 | Research for a book on the history of the Camphill Special Schools movement and its role in the international disability rights movement, including a digital, open-access social network analysis of its founder’s body of work.
My proposal is for a book manuscript and open-access digital project that address the NEH area of interest, Protecting our Cultural Heritage. I trace Jewish pediatricians and disabled children who fled Nazi Vienna for northern Scotland, where they founded an intentional community called Camphill Special School. Camphill soon grew into an international movement for disabled children and adults. Today, there are over 130 Camphill Villages around the world. Camphill’s success is due in part to the way its founders subverted medical norms in disability care: people with disabilities live with their caretakers in family-style households that stress communal learning, work and social life. I argue that Camphill conceived of a new idea of home, one that met a pressing need that neither individual households nor state institutions could meet. Based on oral history interviews and extensive archival research, I reconstruct and contextualize the moment’s history and culture. |