Keene State College (KSC) received a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) project grant in October, 2024. Link to the project announcement.
Events
July 8, 2025 - Teach Disability History Conference - Keene State College - Keene, New Hampshire
- K-12 teachers, instructors of pre-service teachers, disability historians, disability studies educators, and disability rights advocates from across the U.S. will meet to discuss ways to expand and strengthen the teaching of stories of disability history in K-12 schools.
- Project partners will host the annual conference at the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa (2026), and at the University of Texas at Arlington (2027).
- Complete the Interest Sign-Up Form to hold your place for the free July 8, 2025 conference. We will send further details in spring.
December 19, 5:00-6:00pm EST - Teaching Disability History Interest Group - quarterly, virtual sharing & discussion
- Teachers, researchers, historians and advocates meet virtually quarterly to share ideas, experiences, resources, and research at many levels and to build a community of practitioners nationwide. The group also discusses efforts to help teachers meet state standards and/or mandates to teach disability history in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other states.
- To learn more and/or sign up for the free quarterly interest group, you may also complete the Interest Sign-Up Form for the July 8 conference.
Projects
Student Research Guides
Keene, its partners and local teachers will develop a series of guides for student research on disability history in middle and high school classrooms. Topics will include: disabled veterans; alms houses / poor farms; county homes; centers for independent living; schools for deaf, blind and deaf-blind students; students with intellectual disabilities; asylums; and the disability rights movement. Guides will feature rural people with disabilities in New Hampshire, Iowa and Texas. The guides will aid teachers to support student investigation of local stories of disability, including individuals and institutions in students’ communities. The guides will direct students in how to search and to use primary sources from the collections of the Library of Congress and other national and local archives and libraries. Featured Library of Congress collections will include: Historical American Buildings Survey, Sanborn maps, American Folklife Center, StoryCorps, Veterans History Project, and historic newspaper articles from Chronicling America. Watch this space for the guides as we publish them.
Work with Rural Teachers
Keene State College education and history departments will collaborate with the college library and with Emerging America to provide professional development and ongoing support for integrating disability into the curriculum for teachers in rural New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.
Online Exhibit
Emerging America published the online exhibit: How Civil War Veterans Transformed Disability in 2023. Keene State, Emerging America and their partners will broaden exhibit stories to include veterans from across the U.S., especially from rural communities, and including Black southerners who fought for the Union and whites who fought for the Confederacy.
Inclusive History News
Emerging America will continue to publish its monthly eNews under this new title, featuring news and resources on teaching disability history. Email rcairn@collaborative.org to receive the free eNews.
Project Leadership
Graham Warder
Chair of Keene's History Department, will direct the project. He has been active in disability history, beginning in 2000 as Cataloger and Acquisitions Director of the all-digital Disability History Museum. Warder served as lead historian in the development of the nation’s most comprehensive K-12 disability history curriculum: Reform to Equal Rights.
Rich Cairn
History, Civics and Social Studies Inclusion Specialist for CES, was lead author of the Reform to Equal Rights: K-12 Disability History Curriculum. He founded Emerging America in 2006 and the Accessing Inquiry Clearinghouse in 2016. He serves on the board of the Disability History Museum and of the Disability History Association.
Ross Newton
History Teacher at HEC Academy in Northampton, a special education public high school of the Collaborative for Educational Services (CES). He contributes to Emerging America’s Reform to Equal Rights: K-12 Disability Curriculum, and to CES workshops, conference panels, and graduate courses on teaching history to diverse students.
Find more details at the Emerging America Team page.
About the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.
Since 2006, Congress has appropriated funds to the TPS program to establish and fund a consortium of organizations working to incorporate “the digital collections of the Library of Congress into educational curricula.” Each year, members of the TPS Consortium support tens of thousands of learners to build knowledge, engagement and critical thinking skills with items from the Library’s collections.