Autistic History: Link Compilation

Compiled by Kit Mead

This is a link compilation of posts about autistic history, whether general autism history or personal autism history, and foundational/influential pieces. Some of these links may contain information that is “dated” or they may have occasional iffy content.

• Web archive of Jim Sinclair’s writings (writings of an early neurodiversity activist)
• Don’t Mourn for Us by Jim Sinclair (foundational neurodiversity piece)
• The History of ANI by Jim Sinclair (on the history of Autism Network International)
• The Future (and the Past) of Autism Advocacy by Ari Ne’eman (on the future and past of autism advocacy)
• The “Ransom Notes” Affair: When the Neurodiversity Movement Came of Age by Joseph Kras (on the Ransom Notes Campaign in the 2000s; and the response by the neurodiversity community which proved to be the launching pad for many more advocacy campaigns)
• the “effeminate boys” studies by Emma at Lemon Peel (on the origins of applied behavioral analysis, or ABA, and its ties to LGBTQ+ conversion therapy)
• Autistic History Month: The Puzzle Piece by Autisticook (the history of the puzzle piece that is commonly used to symbolize autism)
• Ari Ne’eman talk at Emory:”Autism and the Disability Community: The Politics of Neurodiversity, Causation, and Cure” (transcript; video available) (talk at Emory University in 2013 on the history of autistic advocacy, self-advocacy, and its politics)
• A Conversation on Institutions (at autistics.org library, web archive version)
• A discussion about theory of mind (at autistics.org library, web archive version, a discussion on one of the theories about autism that purports we have no theory of mind)
• Autobiography of Anonymous (at autistics.org library, web archive version, the autobiography of an anonymous autistic born in 1965, personal autistic history)
• The entire autistics.org Library via web archive
• Autistics Speaking Day 2013: Speaking About Autistic History by Sparrow R. Jones
• Critic of the Dawn by Cal Montgomery (foundational and influential)
• We’re Still Fighting Bad Science: On Andrew Wakefield and the Vaccine Deniers by s.e. smith (some history of the anti-vaccine movement and Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent study here)
• What I’ve learned in the past year by Autistic Amoeba (personal autistic history)
• Flowers v Gopal: Ugly Laws, Amistad, Blind Tom Wiggins, & The Legal View of Autistic People at Intersected (some disability history, historical autistic figures tied into the modern day)
• Behavior and genetics, Part 2: Eugenics by Urocyon (blog post from 2010 on genetics, disability, autism, and eugenics)
• My sort of people, just as real as theirs by Mel Baggs at Ballastexistenz (on finding community)
• Neurodiversity.com (archived site)
• Let’s have a conversation by Bev at Square 8 (on communication and language)
• Scripted language and authenticity by Bev at Square 8
• New York Times piece on autistics communicating on the Internet, 1997 by Harvey Blume (ableist in parts)
• Autistic History: My Grandfather’s Story at A Quiet Week in the House
• In Memory of Elsie Lacks by Kerima Çevik (on the daughter of Henrietta Lacks)
• Autreat website
• Library of the History of Autism Research, Behaviorism, and Psychiatry at neurodiversity.com
• The Early History of Autism in America at Smithsonian Magazine (This article is by two authors who wrote a distressingly problematic book on the history of autism, In a Different Key. However, this article didn’t seem like the book – what do you think?)