Writing the History of Disabilities
Agency, Intersections, Concepts
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Available for purchase via Bloomsbury etextbooks on publication date
Description
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 Disability 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.
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Table of Contents
List of figures
List of Contributors
Introduction, Paul van Trigt and Monika Baár
1. Using Postcolonial Approaches to Disability in a Historical Context; British missionaries and Indian and Sri Lankan children, c. 1880-1940, Esme Cleall
2. Disability, Gender, Care and Class in the Context of the 1937 Barbados Labour Protests, Stephanie van Dam
3. “Minority consciousness gone mad?” Disabled Queer Histories in Postwar Britain and the Netherlands, Noah Littel
4. Disability and Religion after the Second World War: from Histories of Opposition to Intersected Histories, Paul van Trigt
5. How can we write disability history without establishing a hierarchy between human lives? An example through the analysis of the lives of blind girls in metropolitan France (first half of the 20th century), Gildas Brégain
6. Dis/counting Disability: Health Disparities, Statistics and the Social History of Tuberculosis in the United States, Kristen Meister
7. The Nature of Exception: Architectures of Presentation at the Circus Sarrasani in Early Twentieth-Century Dresden, Brianne Wesolowski
8. From the first International Silent Games to a loud global movement: tracing the history of disability-inclusive sports from a post-structuralist viewpoint, Florian Kiuppis and Kim Wickman
9. Claiming recognition: The manifold meanings of deafness in the 19th and 20th centuries, Radu Dinu and Staffan Bengtsson
10. Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Disability in Eastern European State Socialism: A Challenge to Established Concepts and Methodologies of Disability History? Pia Schmüser
11. Interdependence through Interspecies Cooperation: Guide Dogs for the Blind in a Historical Perspective, Monika Baár
Product details
| Published | 15 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 9781350521759 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Series | Writing History |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |

























