Communities of Care, a Legacy of Leland Ferguson

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Leland Ferguson's archaeological work remains remarkable for its empathy towards persons, be they represented by archaeological remains, stakeholders, students or colleagues. In recent considerations of how archaeology might better engage with critical disability studies, I found myself thinking about Professor Ferguson's professional life, and it occurred to me that he embodied through his practice and scholarship the idea of "communities of care". Critical Disability Studies has emerged out of conversations with queer and Black feminisms, performance theory, critical race theory, and disability activism, with a strong concern for contemporary social Justice--seeing disability as a rhetorical space where inequality is constructed. In this paper, I will discuss how we can see in Leland Ferguson's life works, inspirations for a critical disability informed archaeology, a perhaps unexpected legacy.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• A Tribute to the Legacy of Leland Ferguson: A Journey From Uncommon Ground to God's Fields

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow