Elizabeth Maher
Graduate Student
History
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Email:
About
Elizabeth Maher is a fourth year PhD student in U.S. history at UIC. She is interested in studying the relationship between disability, race, gender and class in U.S. history.
Notable Honors
2020, Provost’s Graduate Internship Award, University of Illinois at Chicago
Education
B.A. from Ohio State University, 2017
Professional Memberships
Society for Disability Studies
Selected Presentations
“Autism a ‘Modern’ Disorder: Bruno Bettelheim, Psychoanalysis and the Medicalization of “Mass-Society” in the Mid Twentieth Century United States,” University of Chicago Disability Studies Working Group, Chicago, Il, April 22, 2020.
“Wolf Girls and Mechanical Boys: Why Race and Gender Matter in Autism History,” Society for Disability Studies Conference, Columbus, OH, April 5, 2020.
“From Sexual Psychopaths to Psychiatric Survivors: Lesbian Responses to the Pathologizing of Homosexuality in the United States,” Chicago Disability Studies Conference, Chicago, IL, April 21, 2018.
Research Currently in Progress
I am currently working on a raced and gendered history of autism in the United States from 1943 to 1980.
Advisor: Jennifer Brier
Research Interests: 20th century U.S. disability history, the role of race in constructions of disability and vice versa, U.S. women’s and gender history, history of psychiatry, history of science.