Disability History

Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where disabled people live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the world--and it is also a history that helps define the fundamental concepts of identity, community, citizenship, and normality.

The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa. The twenty-seven articles, written by thirty experts from across the field, capture the diversity and liveliness of this emerging scholarship. Whether discussing disability in modern Chinese cinema or on the American antebellum stage, this collection provides new and valuable insights into the rich and varied lives of disabled people across time and place.

Michael Rembis is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Disability Studies at the University at Buffalo. He has written or edited many books and articles, including: Defining Deviance: Sex, Science, and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960 (2011); Disability Histories (2014); and Disabling Domesticity (2016).

Catherine Kudlick became Professor of History and Director of the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University in 2012 after two decades at the University of California, Davis. She has published a number of books and articles in disability history, including Reflections: the Life and Writings of a Young Blind Woman in Postrevolutionary France.

Kim E. Nielsen is Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Toledo, where she also teaches courses in History and Women's & Gender Studies. She is the author of A Disability History of the United States (2012).