University at Buffalo (UB)
Michael Rembis
PhD
Fields
19th and 20th century United States History; Disability History; Mad People’s History; Disability Studies; Mad Studies; History of the Disciplines
About Michael Rembis
Rembis is Professor in the Department of History and Director of the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He specializes in 19th- and 20th-century U.S. history, disability history, mad people's history, and the history of institutionalization and eugenics. His most recent book, Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum (OUP 2024), was shortlisted for the 2026 Cheiron Book Prize. He was the lead scholar on the NYCDOE project, Hidden Voices: Americans with Disabilities in United States History (2024). Rembis is a principle investigator on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Communities of Care project. (2023-2029).
Education
- PhD, History, University of Arizona, Tuscon, 2003
- MS, Curriculum and Instruction, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1996
- BA, History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1994
Courses Regularly Taught
Undergraduate
- Health, Medicine, and Society
- US Disability History
- History of Eugenics
Graduate
- History of Madness
- Disability History I and II
- Historical Inquiry
- Introduction to Disability Studies
Selected Publications
- Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum (Oxford University Press, 2024)
- Hidden Voices: Americans with Disabilities in United States History (NYCDOE, 2024)
- The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, co-edited with Catherine Kudlick and Kim Neilsen (Oxford University Press, 2018)
- Disabling Domesticity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
- Disability Histories, co-edited with Susan Burch (University of Illinois Press, 2014)
- Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960 (University of Illinois Press, 2011, 2013)
Grants
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded Communities of Care project. (2023-2029)