Content Warning: This section discusses ableism, racism, enslavement, and mental illness. The source text’s use of outdated and offensive terms is replicated only in quotations.

In A Disability History of the United States, author Kim E. Nilsen takes an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to provide a historical analysis of disability in the United States. Drawing from her background as a professor of women’s studies and disability studies, Nielsen understands how scholarship on disability intersects with scholarship on race, gender, and class. A multidisciplinary approach allows one to understand the past from various perspectives and understand how disability was connected to larger aspects of American history. In her opening chapter, Nielsen examines disability among Indigenous peoples of pre-Columbian North America. Taking into account cultural aspects of various Indigenous nations, this examination draws primarily from the academic discipline of Native American studies but also incorporates linguistics and geography.

As Nielsen describes the formation of colonial communities after the arrival of European settlers, her examination looks at the effects and consequences of colonialism and colonization. The spread of disease and religiosity, she notes, are important parts of that history, so pathology and theology play a role in Nielsen’s analysis. The issue of slavery dominates the historical aspects of the late colonial period.