ABSTRACT
The 28 chapters of this text trace various cultural and societal conceptualizations of disability from the Greek era to the present day, and they draw upon numerous contributions provided by authors from across the globe. The authors note that despite the comprehensiveness of the text, the story – the history of people with disabilities offered in the preceding pages – is only a beginning, and the many stories within it merely scratch the surface of the multitude of issues which still need addressing when it comes to disability history. However, notwithstanding the limitations of addressing disability in a historical context, this text draws attention to the huge gap evident in historical research which seems to minimize or not deal with disabled peoples' histories at all. Similarly, this text adds to the emerging field of disability studies, and it adds to discourses evidenced in critical disability theory by contextualizing disability according to various historical epochs and cultures which in turn reveal a complex relationship between disabled and nondisabled persons. Interestingly, the historical accounts offered in this text not only highlight the complexity of relationships between disabled and nondisabled citizenships no matter the time or place, but also the various chapters suggest that the relationship was more than a person-to-person, or group-to-group, interaction. Indeed, this text suggests that relationships were and remain to this very day a process that was and is shaped by broader religious, cultural, societal, economic and political entities rooted in history.
