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Disability History in the Middle East
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Description
This volume presents a comparative, cross-disciplinary approach to disability history in Middle Eastern communities, focusing on case studies from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Chapters span a number of country case studies including Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine and Iran, and cover a wide range of topics including experiences of disability during the late Ottoman Empire, the construction of disability under the British Empire in Syria and Egypt, psychiatric healing practices in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the intersections of religion, nationhood and disability.
By foregrounding marginalized voices from the past, to uniquely highlight a perspective on disability studies from the Global South, this book also questions the ethics of treatment and advocacy for policy reform in the present day.
Table of Contents
Ch. 2 – Blindness, Poverty, and Social Control in Late Ottoman Istanbul (1845-1914), by Irem Yildiz, The University of Oxford, UK
Ch. 3 – Modern Prosthetics in Late Ottoman Society, by Elif Küskü, Istanbul Technical University, Türkiye
Ch. 4 – Reading Resistance and Agency Through 19th Century Citizen Petitions” by Yasmin Shafei, American University in Beirut, Lebanon
Ch. 5 – Who Belongs in a Jewish Homeland: Disability, Gender, and Zionism in the Yishuv (1880-1947), by Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
Ch. 6 – Disability and Employment in Colonized Algeria, 1900s-1940s, by Gildas Brégain, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
Ch. 7 – Contesting the Politics of British Prosthetic Care: Pain, Nativeness, and the Plight of Palestinian Jewish Amputees in WWII, by Marco di Giulio, Franklin & Marshall College, USA
Ch. 8 – Between History and Memory: 21st – Century Literary Portrayals of Disability in 1940s and 1950s Palestine and Israel, by Beverly Tsacoyianis, University of Memphis, USA
Ch. 9 – Disabling Effects of Anger in Iran (1941-1951), by Saghar Bozorgi, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Ch. 10 – Portraying Disability in Refugeedom: Palestinian Refugees with Disabilities through UNRWA Photographs and Videos, 1950s-1980s, by Maria Chiara Rioli, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Ch. 11 – Piecing Together the Life of an Iranian Woman Political Prisoner: Defetishizing the Production of Madness and Disability through State Violence, by Sona Kazemi, University of Wisconsin – La Cross, USA, and Efrat Gold, University at Buffalo, USA
Product details
| Published | Nov 26 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 9780755653256 |
| Imprint | I.B. Tauris |
| Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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This is a powerful and necessary contribution to the field of Disability Studies. An absolutely necessary read for anyone interested in the Middle East. Only now can we claim that Disability Studies is inclusive, with the emergence of this volume.
Shahd Alshammari, Associate Professor of Literature, Gulf University for Science & Technology, Kuwait
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Disability History in the Middle East expands our understanding of place-based disability and madness and the past. Critically attentding to the modern state, colonialism, representations, and gender, the authors model historical specificity and deep contextual analysis, reframing core disability history themes: war, technologies, incarceration, poverty, policy, and citizenship. A must-read work for everyone interested in disability history.
Susan Burch, Professor, Middlebury College, US

























