{"product_id":"before-disability-a-history-of-american-citizenship-hardcover","title":"Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eSari Altschuler\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA literary, legal, and cultural history of disability, race, and citizenship between the Revolution and the Civil War\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe history of disability rights is often told as a recent one, but it is not. In the wake of the American Revolution, many of the differences we now call disabilities could be accommodated into citizenship--and for some even exemplified its promises. By the antebellum period, however, disability was becoming a powerful, racialized tool of civic exclusion and, by the century's end, a target for eugenic elimination. In \u003ci\u003eBefore Disability\u003c\/i\u003e, Sari Altschuler tells the story of how this dramatic transformation occurred. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eBefore Disability\u003c\/i\u003e is a literary, legal, and cultural history of the relationship between disability, race, and citizenship. It shows how disability helped to shape US citizenship and, in turn, how the formation of US citizenship shaped disability. There were two key drivers of the transformation from accommodation to exclusion and eugenics: the difficulty aligning the reality with the rhetoric of civic inclusion and the co-opting of mental and physical difference as evidence in debates about Black citizenship. The stigmatizing ways race came together with mental and physical difference to deny Americans rights were, however, not inevitable. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBefore citizenship was federally defined in the late 1860s, Americans were still working out what it meant. They used the narrative forms available to them--from melodrama and the gothic to the slave narrative and the criminal confession--to do this work. While possibilities narrowed by the antebellum era, Americans continued to imagine, articulate, and enact broader definitions. As we seek to imagine the relationship between disability and citizenship more equitably and expansively for ourselves, we should begin by remembering that many disabled and nondisabled Americans before us did, too.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eSari Altschuler is Associate Professor of English and Founding Director of the Health, Humanities, and Society Program at Northeastern University. She is co-editor of \u003ci\u003eKeywords for Health Humanities\u003c\/i\u003e and the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States\u003c\/i\u003e, which is also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 320\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.88 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e June 16, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48713681797369,"sku":"9781512829518","price":68.85,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/BpZ_dOCM7S9781512829518.webp?v=1784994617","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/before-disability-a-history-of-american-citizenship-hardcover","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}