Publications
Selected scholarship and public writing.
Peer-reviewed research, book chapters, and essays. If you hit a paywall, please email for an accessible PDF.
Selected publications
Accessibility
Do Less Harm: Ethical Questions for Health Historians · ed. Courtney Thompson and Kylie Smith · Johns Hopkins University Press · pp. 48–58 · 2025
Dying a ‘Good’ Death: Disability and the Assisted Suicide Debate
Disability Visibility Project · 2025
‘An Emporium of Beggars:’ Medical Rhetoric, Disabled Bodies, and Philadelphia’s Early Nationalist Welfare Crises
Journal of the Early Republic · Vol. 44, no. 1 · pp. 57–86 · 2024
Unspooling
Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire · ed. Alice Wong · Vintage Books · pp. 7–15 · 2024
Popular media & public history
I’ve spoken frequently about my own experiences as a disabled individual. I regularly write on disability rights issues including funding cuts, healthcare access, and assisted suicide.
Dying a ‘Good’ Death: Disability and the Assisted Suicide Debate
Disability Visibility Project · Jan 1, 2025
Essay on disability, assisted dying debates, and the politics of a “good” death.
Philadelphia’s 200-year-old disability records show welfare reform movement’s early shift toward rationing care and punishing poor people
The Conversation · Jun 13, 2024
Public history essay on Philadelphia Guardians of the Poor records and early welfare reform.
Counting Care
The Panorama · Jun 3, 2024
Essay on how early Americans counted welfare and disability—and how reformers weaponized those numbers.
Unspooling
Disability Intimacy (Vintage), reprinted in The Sick Times · May 6, 2024
Essay excerpt on disabled love, care, and desire from Alice Wong’s Disability Intimacy.
COVID Conferences: Vulnerable Scholars Needn’t Apply
Inside Higher Ed · Oct 6, 2022
Opinion essay (with Shira Lurie) on why ending remote conference options excludes vulnerable scholars.
Academic Ableism: Higher Education as a Site of Discrimination
Reading list
Public reading list on academic ableism and higher education as a site of discrimination.
Human Rights and Resistance: Learning from the Nineteenth Century
Reading list
Public reading list on human rights and resistance in the nineteenth century.