Historian Dr. Chelsea Chamberlain joined Wilkes this semester as an assistant professor of global cultures.
Chamberlain is from the northwest and grew up in Idaho. She completed her undergraduate at Whitworth University, Washington as a history major and then went on to complete her master’s in history at the University of Montana, Missoula.
From there, she stayed in Philadelphia for seven years and earned a doctor of philosophy in history from the University of Pennsylvania, which led her to Wilkes.
“I decided I wanted to be a historian after I had a really great high school history teacher,” said Chamberlain. “She made me love the subject and showed me how history wasn’t just about names and dates but was actually about narratives and arguments and about bringing your perspective to the past and letting it inform how you see the present and the future.”
Over the course of her graduate studies, Chamberlain narrowed her focus, becoming a disabilities historian.
In particular, she focuses on the history of disability in the United States, in addition to medicine and education in childhood.
This emphasis of study came about during her masters as she was reading sources that sounded “so strange”, hearing social leaders talking about “feeblemindedness” and “eugenics.”
Chamberlain described it as “going down the rabbit hole” from that point forward as she wanted to know more.
Chamberlain will be going to a conference in Chicago the weekend of Nov. 12 where she will be presenting on the topic about when historians talk about mental disability in history, they often focus on people who were constructed as mentally disabled because they were racial minorities or women that did not behave the way they were expected to.
“I’m going to this conference and talking about how even though it’s hard to find them in the sources because they couldn’t write, it’s important for historians to pay attention to people who had really significant disabilities in the past and connect with them and tell their stories,” said Chamberlain.
Chamberlain finds that she learned a lot about being a teacher in graduate school and how to teach history in ways that hopefully engages her students and teaches them how the subject matter is important and matters.
Unrelated to her education, during her masters in Montana, she also began stand-up comedy where she participated in open mic nights.
“That stuck with me–it made me a way better teacher because once you get used to bombing in front of an audience and trying to crack a joke and just getting nothing in return, it actually makes you much better in the classroom at handling a lack of response or figuring out how to get the response you want,” said Chamberlain.
In her free time, Chamberlain loves to walk her dog. She conducts “walking office hours,” which is an hour-long spot on Wednesday afternoons where she invites students to walk with herself and her dog around the riverwalk.
A word of advice Chamberlain would give to students is to communicate with professors.
She sees students struggle with this the most and knows that faculty members want to help, but they can not know that a student needs help unless they express so and ask for it.
Chamberlain states that students will find a lot of grace, encouragement and support from faculty, so long as they are willing to ask for it.