A Cultural History Of Disability

How has our understanding and treatment of disability evolved in Western culture? How has it been represented and perceived in different social and cultural conditions?0In a work that spans 2,500 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by over 50 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. The volumes describe different kinds of physical and mental disabilities, their representations and receptions, and what impact they have had on society and everyday life.0Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six. 0The six volumes cover: 1. - Antiquity (500 BCE - 500 CE); 2. - Middle Ages (500 - 1450); 3. - Renaissance (1400 - 1650) ; 4. - Long Eighteenth Century (1650 - 1800); 5. - Long Nineteenth Century (1800 - 1920); 6. - Modern Age (1920 - 2000+).0Themes (and chapter titles) are: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; mental health.0The page extent is approximately 2,000pp with c. 200 illustrations. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with Notes, Bibliography and an Index.

In Renaissance humanism, difference was understood through a variety of paradigms that rendered particular kinds of bodies and minds disabled. A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance, covering the period from 1450 to 1650, explores evidence of the possibilities for disability that existed in the European Renaissance, observable in the literary and medicinal texts, and the family, corporate, and legal records discussed in the chapters of this volume. These chapters provide an interdisciplinary overview of the configurations of bodies, minds and collectives that have left evidence of some of the ways that normativity and its challengers interacted in the Renaissance. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance explores such themes and topics as: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; and mental health.

The long 19th century-stretching from the start of the American Revolution in 1776 to the end of World War I in 1918-was a pivotal period in the history of disability for the Western world and the cultures under its imperial sway. Industrialization was a major factor in the changing landscape of disability, providing new adaptive technologies and means of access while simultaneously contributing to the creation of a mass-produced environment hostile to bodies and minds that did not adhere to emerging norms. In defining disability, medical views, which framed disabilities as problems to be solved, competed with discourses from such diverse realms as religion, entertainment, education, and literature. Disabled writers and activists generated important counternarratives, made increasingly available through the spread of print culture. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century includes chapters on atypical bodies, mobility impairment, chronic pain and illness, blindness, deafness, speech dysfluencies, learning difficulties, and mental health, with 37 illustrations drawn from period sources.

18th century philosopher Edmund Burke wrote, 'deformity is opposed, not to beauty, but to the complete, common form. If one of the legs of a man be found shorter than the other, the man is deformed; because there is something wanting to complete the whole idea we form of a man'. During the long 18th century, new ideas from aesthetics and the emerging scientific disciplines of physics, biology and zoology contributed to changing fundamental notions about human form, function and ability. The interrelated concepts of the natural and the beautiful coalesced into a hegemonic ideology of form, one which defined communal standards regarding which aspects of human appearance and ability would be considered typical and socially acceptable and which would not. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century explores such themes and topics as: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; and mental health.

The increasing numbers of scholars, policy-makers, and political activists who are concerned with questions of physical and cognitive disability will warmly welcome Henri-Jacques Stiker's book, the first to attempt to provide a framework for analyzing disability through the ages. Published in 1997 in France as Corps infirmes et sociétés and available now in an excellent English translation, the book traces the history of western cultural responses to disability, from ancient times to the present. In this volume, Stiker examines a fundamental issue in contemporary Western discourse on disability: the cultural assumption that equality/sameness/similarity is always desired by those in society. He highlights the consequences of such a mindset, illustrating the intolerance of diversity and individualism that arises from placing such importance on equality. Importantly, Stiker does not hesitate to assert his own stance on the issues he discusses: that difference is not only acceptable, but that it is desirable, that it is necessary. The author goes beyond anecdotal history to traverse a little known history, penetrating to the heart of collective attitudes and reflecting on elements of policy. The sweep is broad; from a rereading and reinterpretation of the Oedipus myth to current legislation regarding disablity, he proposes an analytical history that demonstrates how societies reveal themselves through their attitudes towards disability, at times in unexpected ways, since the study of detail is often the best entry into the whole of a culture. The book will be of interest to scholars of disability, historians, social scientists, cultural anthropologists, and those who are intrigued by the role that culture plays in the development of language and thought surrounding the disabled. Henri-Jacques Stiker is Director of Research and member of the department of the History and Civilization of Western Societies, University of Paris VII.