Soaking with Your Subjects: Disability Microhistory as a Methodological Bridge Between Microhistory and Critical Disability Studies

This article demonstrates that disability microhistory provides a powerful methodological framework by integrating microhistory with critical disability studies. Using Icelandic public records from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, this study shows how seemingly fragmentary institutional sources can reconstruct the nuanced lived experiences of disabled individuals. By integrating microhistorical close reading with the ethical and analytical tools of critical disability studies, this approach allows historians to recover agency, care networks, and everyday participation. The main argument is that such a framework challenges exclusionary narratives and highlights complexity, resilience, and social embeddedness. Disability microhistory thus sets out an empirically grounded, innovative model for future research on disability in history.