Laurel Daen

Laurel Daen is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame with concurrent appointments in Gender Studies; Health, Humanities, and Society; and the History and Philosophy of Science. Her research and teaching focus on disability, sickness, medicine, and health in America, primarily during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. She is currently completing her first book, which examines the exclusion of disabled people from legal and political rights in the early United States. The book also documents how disabled people resisted these exclusions, recovering an early history of disability rights activism. This project has received support from two National Endowment for the Humanities grants and is set to be published as part of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture’s series at the University of North Carolina Press. In addition to this book, Daen has articles published or forthcoming in Technology and Culture, Journal of Social History, Journal of the Early Republic, Early American Literature, and History Compass, among other publications. Her article for the Journal of the Early Republic won the Outstanding Article and Book Chapter Award from the Disability History Association in 2018.

Before coming to Notre Dame, Daen earned her Ph.D. from William & Mary and held long-term National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the Massachusetts Historical Society. While at William & Mary, she received the Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences and the John E. Selby Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction.