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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

New Essay on Disability and the Haunted House

Hi All,
There's an interesting online essay just published in The Hastings Report by U of Minnesota grad student Emily Smith Beitiks, who writes from a DS perspective: "The Ghosts of Institutionalization at Pennhurst's Haunted Asylum"

Abstract

In the woods of Spring City, Pennsylvania, lies Pennhurst, a school for people with developmental and physical disabilities from 1908 to 1987. Like many institutions, Pennhurst eventually became a place of abuse and neglect. Pennhurst was finally shut down, and the residents were relocated into group homes. Two years ago, a group well educated about Pennhurst's past formed the Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to making Pennhurst into a national museum. Standing in the way of PM&PA's vision was a businessman named Richard Chakejian, who purchased Pennhurst from the state for $2 million and has now converted it to a haunted house. The result is a bizarre hybrid of history and legend, and of criminality and commercialism, that simultaneously evokes and erases Pennhurst's troubled past.

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.10/full



Cathy Kudlick
Professor of History
UC Davis, USA

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