Diagnosis, Education, and Productivity: Medicalized Life and Death at the Sonoma Developmental Center (1914-1920)

Students: Emily Nightingale, Ursula Senghas-Poles, Fernando Pimentel, Sveva Dal Pont, Ryan Reynolds, Marina Scanagatta

Faculty Mentor: Alexis Boutin

Anthropology

College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts

The Sonoma Developmental Center served thousands of residents who were disabled, mentally ill, or deviated from social norms from 1891 to 2018. This community-based project supports stakeholder efforts in memorializing the experiences of its early 20th-century residents in life and death, and in helping manage its cultural resources, including the "Home Cemetery." Our poster focuses on 1914–1920, a formative era that reflects broader trends in institutional practices and societal attitudes toward medicalized populations and the perception of (dis)ability, and was characterized by the 1918-19 influenza pandemic. Sixty-eight victims of the pandemic are buried in the cemetery. Our recent research creates a context for their lives by reconstructing the praxis of education, care, and training at the SDC.