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Disability History in the Middle East cover
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Pre-order. Available Nov 26 2026
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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. 1 – “Introduction: Disabling Narratives,” by Sara Scalenghe and Beverly Tsacoyianis
Ch. 2 – “Empire, Charity, and the Construction of Disability: The Case of the British Syrian Mission, 1860-1918,” by Sara Scalenghe, Loyola University Maryland, USA
Ch. 3 – “The Modern Prosthetic Experience of Late Ottoman Society,” by Elif Küskü, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
Ch. 4 – “Disability, Environment, and Medicalisation of Blindness in the Late Ottoman Empire,” by Irem Yildiz, The University of Oxford, UK
Ch. 5 – “Reading Resistance and Agency Through 19th Century Citizen Petitions” by Yasmin Shafei, American University in Beirut, Lebanon
Ch. 6 – “Who Belongs in a Jewish Homeland: Disability, Gender, and Zionism in the Yishuv,” by Sarah Imhoff, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
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 – “'Discharged Uncured': The Failures of the Asylum in Colonial Egypt,” by Sam Pulliam, United States Naval Academy, USA
Ch. 9 – “On Souls, Psyches, and Spirits: Applying Trauma and Disability Studies Frameworks to Religious and Psychiatric Healing Practices in the 20th-Century Eastern Mediterranean,” by Beverly Tsacoyianis, University of Memphis, USA
Ch. 10 – “Treat Your Mind in Your Hand: Mid-20th Century Mental Health Discourses in Iran,” by Saghar Bozorgi, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Ch. 11 – “Portraying Disability in Refugeedom: Palestinian Refugees with Disability through UNRWA Photographs” by Maria Chiara Rioli, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Ch. 12 – “Conclusion: Enriching Disability History through Middle Eastern Studies, and Enriching Middle Eastern Studies through Disability History,” by co-editors Sara Scalenghe and Beverly Tsacoyianis

Product details

Published Nov 26 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Pages 272
ISBN 9780755653256
Imprint I.B. Tauris
Dimensions 234 x 156 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Beverly Tsacoyianis

Beverly Tsacoyianis is an Associate Professor in t…

Anthology Editor

Sara Scalenghe

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