Comment: Immigration History and Disability History

DAVID A. GERBER

I HAVE A SINGULAR status in this exchange of views, because I am the only one among the participants other than Douglas Baynton, who has worked extensively both in immigration history and in the emerging field of disability history. But while Baynton has brought the two fields together in one inquiry in his recent scholarship and this essay, my work has proceeded along parallel tracks for almost a decade now. I write various aspects of the history of disabled veterans of military service in western societies, and I write about the cultural practices, especially personal correspondence, that united immigrants and the family and friends they left behind in their homelands. The two projects are based on one abiding interest: the problem of personal identity for ordinary individuals living through epic events and large processes of the sort that transform or threaten to transform life—in these cases, enduring injury and sickness sustained in war; and international migration and resettlement in a new land.