Michael Rembis
Director of the Center for Disability Studies and Professor of History, University at Buffalo
Michael A. Rembis is the Director of the Center for Disability Studies and an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He came to Buffalo from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a visiting scholar in the Department of American Studies and the Department of History. His work, which has appeared in many journals and edited collections, has won several awards, including the 2008 Irving K. Zola Award, awarded annually by the Society for Disability Studies to emerging scholars. His first book, Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960, is available from University of Illinois Press. He is currently working on a disability history anthology co-edited with Susan Burch, forthcoming from University of Illinois Press and an Oxford University Press Handbook on Disability History, which he is co-editing with Kim Nielsen and Cathy Kudlick. In 2012, Rembis and co-editor Kim Nielsen launched the Disability Histories book series also with University of Illinois Press.
Since completing the PhD in history, Rembis has served as co-founder and member of the Disability Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona, where he helped to create an undergraduate curriculum in Disability Studies. He also spent two-years working with faculty and administrators at the University of Notre Dame, building their Disability Studies Forum. Most recently, Rembis has been fortunate to benefit from a close collaboration with David Gerber (Distinguished Professor of History) at the University at Buffalo, where they have worked to establish the Center for Disability Studies and create a formal master’s level (MA) degree concentration in Disability Studies. He serves on the American Historical Association’s Task Force on Disability and the Board of Directors of the Society for Disability Studies.
