Writing the History of Disabilities
Agency, Intersections, Concepts
Monika Baár editor Paul Van Trigt editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:12th Nov '26
£24.99
This title is due to be published on 12th November, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This book uses a variety of case studies to examine how disability can be used as an analytical lens, and provide new perspectives on historical research.
Approximately 15-20% of the world's population is estimated to be disabled. Writing the History of Disabilities examines 13 case studies, ranging from the activism of Italian First World War veterans, to the social history of Tuberculosis in North America, and the history of disability in sport. Each chapter encourages wider historical engagement with the social and cultural impacts of disability, and demonstrates how the history of disability can interact with existing theoretical frameworks.
This book demonstrates the potential for disability as an analytical concept, both in its own right, and as a new approach to the study of history. Illuminating the intersections between disability and class, race, gender, and sexuality, this volume examines disability alongside a range of historical methodologies, and invites students to include disability in their analytical toolkit, and create more inclusive histories.
Disability is not marginal to history, but fundamental to it. Rigorously argued and wide-ranging, this volume repositions disability as a critical lens for rethinking citizenship, colonialism, normativity, and power, to unsettle assumptions that have previously shaped these histories. * Dr. Jaipreet Virdi, University of Victoria, Canada *
Writing the History of Disabilities adds to the wave of disability historiography displacing North America and the United Kingdom as centers of study—and originating new methodologies in the process. With chapters that examine Eastern European socialist states and colonial settings, among other locations and topics, this volume offers pivotal reappraisals of ground theories in disability studies, such as the decline of “the religious model,” the ideal of democratic rights, and the requisites of medicalization and capitalism for the very existence of disability. * Mara Mills, New York University, USA *
Contributors to this important volume further develop disability as an analytic, brining it, and the subfield of disability history, more firmly into conversation with other historical approaches and subfields. The authors bring together theory and practice, analytics and empiricism in exciting and innovative intersectional histories of disability that illuminate the past and inform the present. A must-read for specialists and non-specialists alike. * Michael Rembis, University of Buffalo, USA *
This thought-provoking volume points the way for future work in disability history. Its breadth and depth offer fresh perspectives useful to students and scholars in a wide variety of fields within and beyond the world of disability studies. * Catherine Jean Kudlick, San Francisco State University, USA *
ISBN: 9781350521742
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
288 pages