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Towards a Global History of War, Disability and Gender

By Natalie Tongue

The history of disabilities remains understudied within the discipline, despite being a widespread and pervasive phenomenon. Only in recent years has the history of disability become a focus of global history, which is reflected in postcolonial histories. This essay seeks to examine the connection between disability and masculinity, particularly in relation to histories of war. This will be achieved through a review of a series of books, articles and edited collections to piece together a full picture of the trends in this intersection of the respective fields interested in disability and to understand where a global history approach would enhance disability histories.

Whereas most of the research reviewed here looks at singular nations and singular periods of time, a global history approach to this field would provide a wider spatial and temporal scope. This would aid understandings on how specific cultural, geographical and temporal contexts define the experiences of both disability and gender. This essay explores how masculinity and disability have been studied in relation to each other, and in contexts of war. Recent scholarship has also approached how war, disability and masculinity intersect with the lives of women as well.

The ways in which this field has been studied and the questions raised regarding where the field must progress is explored through three stages. First, the development of the approaches to disability studies is analysed tracing its origins as an interdisciplinary project in order to understand the different models of disability applied to historical research. Second, exploring how masculinity and disability have been approached and the value of an intersectional approach to the field. Third, the approaches developed in disability studies and the intersection of disability and masculinity are applied to studies of war-related disabilities.

War-inflicted trauma was turned into a masculine diagnosis, showing the intersection between masculinity and disability. Photo showing wounded soldiers in 1916, via Wikimedia Commons.

Disability Studies

Disability studies emerged as an academic field across the Western world in the late twentieth century as a result of increased social activism, with the aim of increasing rights and inclusion.[1] An interdisciplinary field, disability studies questioned the undisputed acceptance of a paradigm of disability as purely a medical occurrence. That is, disability as an impairment or difference that required a medical solution or rehabilitation. Scholars posited an alternative understanding of disability as a social phenomenon. It viewed disability as the result of specific cultural contexts and social understandings of normalcy, and set out to explore how these are applied, reinforced, negotiated and contested.[2]

Here, the division between the social and medical models were distinguished between “‘impairment’ as a functional limitation and ‘disability’ as a socially generated system of discrimination”.[3] The social status and roles of people with disabilities was no more inevitable or medically determined than gender roles.[4]  In recent years, a third approach to disability studies has emerged: the cultural paradigm. The cultural approach to disability studies seeks to understand impairment and disability as interconnected, highlighting an intertwined relationship between the material body and the social world.[5] Following the cultural model of disability in the following scholarship review, injury, impairment and disability will not be so explicitly distinguished between. This approach is beneficial as it considers the agency of disabled people in how they perceive their own experiences of disability far greater than previous models, which primarily emphasise the impact of external structures.

Masculinity and Disability

In early histories of disability and masculinity, a ubiquitous argument emerged presenting social constructions of disability as an inherent challenge to normalised notions of manhood and masculinity. Adrienne Asch and Michelle Fine were amongst the earliest to posit this supposed contradiction in their 1988 book Women with Disabilities in which they assert “having a disability was seen as synonymous with being dependent, childlike, and helpless – an image fundamentally challenging all that is embodied in the ideal male: virility, autonomy, and independence.”[6] This view on the two identities and how they interact with each other has been labelled “the dilemma of disabled masculinity”.[7] This argument relies on the idea that there is one hegemonic masculinity that defined the lives of all men, and a conception of disability that recent historical studies clearly refute. In a qualitative, sociological study, Shuttleworth et al. highlight the importance of viewing neither disability nor masculinity as stagnant, singular categories but review studies that reveal how different masculinities at different points in time have interacted with different forms of impairment.[8]

While in the West there has historically been a hegemonic masculinity, designed to demonstrate strength and leadership and being the economic provider, which is sometimes in conflict with impairment, it would be too simplistic to argue that masculinity is always and irrefutably at odds with disability. This undermines the ways in which people adapt, negotiate and reformulate their lives and relationships and therefore gender identities when impairment arose. It ignores men who did not operate within hegemonic masculinities irrespective of their disabilities. It does not consider spatial and temporal contexts whereby hegemonic masculinities and experiences of disability might differ. A global approach to this field would illuminate this further.

Kathleen M. Brian and James W. Trent Jr’s edited collection Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity marks a valuable contribution to studies on disability and masculinity. It brings together different approaches to history and disability studies, which explore the heterogeneity of the masculine disability experience. The book seeks to question “what it means to be a man and what it means to have a disability not as identities or subjectivities that are fixed in time and space”.[9] While emphasising the importance of studying disabled male bodies in relation to able-bodied and gendered normativity, Phallacies does not perceive these norms to be stagnant hegemonies and applies a broader temporal and spatial lens through which disabled masculinity should be understood.

This book offers new methodological possibilities for studying disability, drawing on a wealth of cultural and personal sources as opposed to exclusively official archival material. It succeeds in dismantling the presumed distinct boundaries of essentialist categories and unveils a far more complex reality. The collection of articles counters the simplistic notions of masculinity and disability that present both as inherently and irrevocably in opposition to one another. While the book could benefit from research in intellectual or ‘invisible’ disabilities, as opposed to primarily physical, visual disabilities, it nonetheless forms a foundational cultural approach to the intersection of disability and masculinity. The approaches taken in this book inform the following review on recent scholarship in order to understand how historical studies have – and should – address the intersection of disability and masculinity in various historical contexts.

War, Disability and Masculinity

It is not surprising that significant attention has been given to disability – broadly and in the context of masculinity – in relation to war. War has been a dominant area for research in disability histories as it has been considered to be responsible for major technological and medical developments.[10] In addition, there is a wealth of institutional sources from various government archives on the impact and aftermath of war on male bodies. Studying how disability, masculinity and war intersect, three key themes emerge. First, cultural representations of paraplegic soldiers. Second, institutional diagnoses and treatment of disabled veterans. Third, the lesser studied impact of war upon civilians.

Cultural representations

In histories of cultural representations of disabled soldiers, scholarship has engaged with narratives of pity, admiration and inspiration that circulate both historical representations of disabled veterans and contemporary epistemic analyses. Working with largely unexplored newspaper coverage of the American Civil War, Ronald and Mary Zboray explore media representations of one celebrated disabled ‘hero’. Taking Thomas Plunkett – who became armless during fighting – as their primary case study, they argue that his physical maiming became linked to his status as a hero. Newspaper coverage “transformed pity into admiration”, celebrating the war-inflicted impairment of Plunkett and many nameless soldiers for not shying away from their national duty.[11] This study refers at times to the ‘supercrip’ trope – the label sometimes applied to disabled people who have achieved exceptional success despite the challenges of their impairment. It shows that in these media reports there were at times hints of this kind of sensationalism, but this was not the exclusive or consistent representation of Plunkett.

This raises important mistakes in the application of the term ‘supercrip’ in disability studies, as has been recently explored. Anna Hickey-Moody argues that this term implies an ability to ‘overcome’ impairment, positioning disabled people as ‘less than’.[12] While ostensibly this rhetoric may emerge in such newspaper reports, it simplifies contemporary understandings of disability. Sami Schalk concurs that following this narrative erases any possibility for positive representation in these case studies.[13] This highlights the importance of disabled voices in histories of disability. Another important question to ask in relation to the application of the notion of ‘supercrip’ in academia is to whom it has been applied and in which contexts?

In another essay on disabled veterans as heroic, Kinder further demonstrates that media representations of disabled heroes do not produce images of the ‘supercrip’ as the extraordinary body, but rather seek to reproduce hegemonic notions of the ideal masculinity and physical attractiveness. Kinder highlights how during the World Wars of the twentieth century, images of disabled soldiers increasingly appeared in the media as advertisements for various products. Kinder argues that these advertisements presented the image of healing and hope, as well as connecting “patriotic consumption” to “manly sacrifice”.[14] For Kinder, these advertisements “reinforce the belief that disabled veterans (indeed, all disabled men) can – and thus should – attempt to reshape their bodies to fit a very narrow ideal of embodied masculinity”.[15] This survey of advertisements shows the notion of aspiration and admiration at work, alongside how negotiations and rehabilitation of physical, visible disabilities is centred with a vision of a specific hegemonic masculinity in mind. Kinder effectively demonstrates that in this context, the so-called dilemma of disabled masculinity is not inherent as this masculinity is attainable.

It is important to highlight also how cultural representations of disabled veterans do not exclusively present aspirational images of heroes and veterans who have regained the characteristics of the heteronormative male. Salih Can Açıksöz interviewed disabled veterans from the Turkish Army who fought against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the late twentieth century. Açıksöz argued that by bringing disabled veterans into public and political discourse, the men were re-masculinised as the advocates for nationalist policies.[16] Concluding that this phenomenon goes beyond the Turkish case study, Açıksöz argues that disabled veterans’ bodies reveal the brutality of warfare while becoming the “ideological impetus for further bloodshed”.[17] Disabled bodies were publicised in service of war. While this is not a historical study, it is an important reminder of how the interdisciplinary nature of disability studies draws on a greater temporal scope that shows that there is not one synonymous global representation of disability in the media.

Institutional treatment

Both Kinder and Marie Coleman address the issue of the absence of invisible disabilities in histories of disability. Marie Coleman’s article ‘Privileged Injuries’ explores how disability was institutionally recognised in the Irish Free State following the Irish Revolution according to government pension schemes. In both the 1923 and 1927 pension schemes, Coleman identifies a hierarchy of impairment, whereby these schemes focused on visible physical injury over the invisible, psychological trauma.[18] Other studies from WW1 European treatment and pension schemes concur with these findings.[19] The idea emerged whereby pensions were awarded as a form of compensation for these men choosing to participate in the war over the economic labour they would otherwise have pursued, and to compensate those whose injuries would prevent future economic pursuit.[20]

This raises questions as to how women have been studied in relation to military masculinities. Síobhra Aiken highlights how women’s treatment of trauma centred around domestication and ‘refeminization’, whereas men’s centred on rehabilitating men back into conflict.[21] While this shows that medical management sought to reinforce hegemonic gender roles, it highlights the ways in which women engaged with dominant military masculinities.

A key area in which so-called ‘invisible’ disabilities have been studied in relation to war is in the British post-war phenomenon of ‘shell shock’. This area of study also fits the major trends of disability histories in war to examine either disabled soldiers or institutional treatment of such soldiers. In exploring a period in British history where the invisible disability of post-traumatic stress gained institutional and public attention, Peter Leese makes a similar argument to that found in Coleman’s more recent study regarding masculinity and war-inflicted disability. Leese argues that not only were shell-shocked soldiers “a function of the modern industrial society”, but diagnoses were awarded according to fitness for employment, and treatment had employment as its goal.[22] In this sense, there was a hegemonic masculinity tied to economic value, and recognition and treatment of mental disorders resulting from war centred on rehabilitating disabled soldiers with a masculinity that centred economic labour. Turning war-inflicted trauma into a masculine diagnosis healed the conflict between masculine ideals and mental illness.

Studies on shell shock has opened avenues for global histories of disabilities and war with studies exploring the distinction in treatment for British soldiers and Indian soldiers. Trevor Dodman, for example, highlights how Indian soldiers were not officially diagnosed with ‘shell shock’.[23] This has been connected to differing conceptions of the masculine soldier between Britain and India. This area of research highlights how the racialised masculinities of Indian soldiers as the ‘martial race’, a masculinity distinguished from the British masculine ideal in both India itself and across the British Empire, conflicted with an acceptance of mental impairment. The ‘martial race’ was supposedly designed for warfare, and shell shock would have undermined this racialisation.[24] The ‘dilemma of disabled masculinity’ is subverted by this transnational approach as it undercuts the conception of a singular masculinity exclusively at odds with a singular understanding of disability. The contrast of treatment of British soldiers with that of colonial subjects is an important avenue for a global history approach to a history of disability, masculinity and war.

Civilians?

While there is a wealth of histories of the experiences of paraplegic soldiers, the impact of war on civilians in relation to disability has been comparatively understudied. One notable study paving the way for histories of civilians wounded and disabled in war is Herbert Muyinda’s study on landmine survivors in Uganda. Using oral testimonies from the survivors, Muyinda explores the impact of impairment upon gender dynamics in the domestic sphere and its impact upon networks of care. In a region that Muyinda notes has a history of formal institutions for welfare services being limited, this oral history study about the local response to disability offers an insight into gender roles in disability communities that would otherwise be inaccessible if reliant upon institutional sources alone.[25] 

Whereas studies on disabled soldiers overwhelmingly look at institutional support, this study shows how wounded civilians advocated for themselves and highlights their agency in their experiences of disability. This study represents the emergence of a new lens for studies of disability and war. The focus on civilians brings to light new dynamics of community support and examines gender roles in different ways than the simple dichotomy of soldiers and their families. It introduces new questions surrounding gender roles in relation to care and invites questions as to the institutional support, cultural perceptions and lived experiences of civilians disabled by war.

Conclusion

Disability studies emerged in a climate of activism, pushing against the notion that disability is exclusively a medical phenomenon. Scholars advocated for research into the social and cultural structures that define the experiences of disabled people. Masculinity and disability histories converged around the idea that they were inherently incompatible, a fallible argument based on the assumption that there is one hegemonic masculinity and one understanding of disability. In relation to war, the intersection of masculinity and disability has largely centred around cultural representations of disability and the institutional treatment of disabled people.

An important next step forward for gender histories of disability in war would be how these masculinities in transition interact and affect femininities. Elsewhere in disability studies, such as in relation to labour, the affecting domestic lifestyles of wounded men has been studied exploring how masculinities evolved in their new positions within the home but also how women’s roles adapted and changed in accordance with this. There has been research on civilian women impacted not by their own disablement but by the loss and disablement of their male relatives, for example, a study on bereaved widows in post-WWI Germany.[26] This is an important step towards a fuller history on how hegemonic gender norms were confronted by war-inflicted disabilities. Women in this category are mainly tracked as victims of violence against civilians in times of war.[27] Increased study on the impact of war on civilians surely cannot neglect women as participants of war. In the case of the Irish Revolution alone, there were a number of female volunteers who participated in warfare in various ways. They negotiated their gender identity in order to assume militaristic positions and defended their transgressive femininity when injured and impaired by war. Masculinity should not exclusively be the study of men.

Much of the research on disabilities and war have taken singular, national approaches as opposed to a transnational or global lens. The research in this area has been for a long time dominated by studies on the global North, particularly from the twentiwth century.[28] This is a limiting scope. There is a long history of conflicts and wars involving imperial powers. This affected both civilian colonial subjects alongside those conscripted into the war. In recent years, broader research into disability histories has taken a postcolonial lens. Global disability histories are beginning to be achieved in disability studies. Esme Cleall argues that there has been an “imaginative gulf” between global and disability history as a result of assumptions about mobility – or the supposed lack thereof in the lives of disabled peoples – and a view of disabled people as apolitical figures who were never proponents of political change or development.[29] A global history approach rectifies this narrow vision.

The works reviewed in this essay form a foundation for an avenue to a global history approach to the field. Cultural models of disability studies rely on an understanding of the distinct experiences of disabled people in different contexts. A global history approach would highlight the diverse and complex ways in which disability and masculinity interact in contexts of war. Further, as war, conflict and colonialism are inseparable, racialised understandings of how masculinity differed across colonial epicentres and peripheries would be undeniable. This is essential for a meaningful and committed undertaking of the field.


Notes

[1] Helen Meekosha and Russell Shuttleworth, ‘What’s so ‘critical’ about critical disability studies?’, Australian Journal of Human Rights 15, 1 (2009), pp. 47–75, here pp. 48–49.

[2] Colin Barnes, ‘Understanding the social model of disability: Past, present and future’, in: Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone and Carol Thomas (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 14–31, here pp. 19–20.

[3] Meekosha and Shuttleworth, ‘critical disability studies?’, p. 50.

[4] Simi Linton, Susan Mello and John O’Neill, ‘Disability Studies: Expanding the Parameters of Diversity’, The Radical Teacher 47 (University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 4–10, here p. 5.

[5] Daniel Blackie and Alexia Moncrieff, ‘State of the Field: Disability History’, History 107, 377 (2022), pp. 789–811, here p. 792.

[6] Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch, ‘Introduction’, in: Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch (eds.), Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 1–38, here pp. 1–7.

[7] Russell Shuttleworth, Nikki Wedgwood, and Nathan J. Wilson, ‘The Dilemma of Disabled Masculinity’, Men and Masculinities 15, 2 (2012), pp. 174–194, here p. 174.

[8] Ibid., pp. 188–189.

[9] David Serlin, ‘Introduction’, in: Kathleen M. Brian and James W. Trent Jr (eds.), Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 1–22, here p. 19.

[10] Blackie and Moncrieff, ‘State of the Field’, pp. 806–807.

[11] Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray, ‘Recovering Disabled Veterans in Civil War Newspapers: Creating Heroic Disability’, Journalism History 45, 1 (2019), pp. 3–25, here p. 17.

[12] Anna Hickey-Moody, Deleuze and Masculinity (Melbourne: Springer, 2019), p. 134.

[13] Sami Schalk, ‘Reevaluating the Supercrip’, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 10, 1 (2016), pp. 71–86, here p. 71.

[14] John M. Kinder, ‘Marketing Disabled Manhood: Veterans and Advertising since the Civil War’, in: Brian and Trent (eds.), Phallacies (2017), pp. 93–125, here pp. 93–95.

[15] Ibid., p. 120.

[16] Salih Can Açıksöz, ‘Sacrificial Limbs of Sovereignty: Disabled Veterans, Masculinity, and Nationalist Politics in Turkey’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26, 1 (2012), pp. 4–25, here pp. 5–6.

[17] Ibid., p. 20.

[18] Marie Coleman, ‘Privileged Injuries: Defining Disability Among Veterans of the Irish Revolution (1916–1923)’, History 107, 377 (2022), pp. 707–726, here pp. 710–711.

[19] Such as: Paul Lerner, Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930 (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2003).

[20] Coleman, ‘Privileged Injuries’, p. 710.

[21] Síobhra Aiken, ‘The Women who had been Straining Every Nerve: Gender-specific Medical Management of Trauma in the Irish Revolution (1916–1923)’, in: Melania Terrazas Gallego (ed.), Trauma and Identity in Contemporary Irish Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, 2019), pp. 133–158, here pp. 149–150.

[22] Peter Leese, Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 177.

[23] Trevor Dodman, Shell Shock, Memory, and the Novel in the Wake of World War I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 155.

[24] Lien Van Autreve, ‘Discourses of Masculinity during the First World War: An analysis of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Mulk Raj Anand’s Across the Black Waters’ (Universiteit Gent: Unpublished MA Thesis, 2017), pp. 40–44.

[25] Herbert Muyinda, ‘Negotiating Disability: Mobilization and Organization among Landmine Survivors in Late Twentieth-Century Northern Uganda’, in: Susan Burch and Michael Rembis (eds.), Disability Histories (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014), p. 98.

[26] Erika Kuhlman, Of Little Comfort: War Widows, Fallen Soldiers, and the Remaking of the Nation after the Great War (New York: New York University Press, 2012), pp. 23–25.

[27] For example: Jessie Barton-Hronešová, ‘‘Why Is My Leg Worth Less?’ Disability and the Loss of Life of Military and Civilian War Victims’, in: Jessie Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 131–182.

[28] Ibid., p. 805.

[29] Esme Cleall, ‘Introduction: Global Histories of Disability: Thinking about Power, Place, and People’, in: Esme Cleall (ed.), Global Histories of Disability, 1700–2015 (New York: Routledge, 2023), pp. 1–19, here pp. 1, 7, 8. 


References

Açıksöz, Salih Can, ‘Sacrificial Limbs of Sovereignty: Disabled Veterans, Masculinity, and Nationalist Politics in Turkey’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26, 1 (2012), pp. 4–25.

Aiken, Síobhra, ‘The women who had been straining every nerve: Gender-specific medical management of trauma in the Irish Revolution (1916–1923)’, in: Melania Terrazas Gallego (ed.), Trauma and Identity in Contemporary Irish Culture (Bern: Peter Lang, 2019), pp. 133–158.

Barnes, Colin, ‘Understanding the social model of disability: Past, present and future’, in: Nick Watson, Alan Roulstone and Carol Thomas (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 14–31.

Barton-Hronešová, Jessie, ‘‘Why Is My Leg Worth Less?’ Disability and the Loss of Life of Military and Civilian War Victims’, in: Jessie Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Oxford: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Blackie, Daniel and Alexia Moncrieff, ‘State of the Field: Disability History’, History 107, 377 (2022), pp. 789–811.

Cleall, Esme, ‘Introduction: Global Histories of Disability: Thinking about Power, Place, and People’, in: Esme Cleall (ed.), Global Histories of Disability, 1700–2015 (New York: Routledge, 2023), pp. 1–19.

Coleman, Marie, ‘Privileged Injuries: Defining Disability Among Veterans of the Irish Revolution (1916–1923)’, History 107, 377 (2022), pp. 707–726.

Dodman, Trevor, Shell Shock, Memory, and the Novel in the Wake of World War I (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Fine, Michelle and Adrienne Asch, ‘Introduction’, in: Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch (eds.), Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), pp. 1–38.

Hickey-Moody, Anna, Deleuze and Masculinity (Melbourne: Springer, 2019).

Kinder, John M., ‘Marketing Disabled Manhood: Veterans and Advertising since the Civil War’, in: Brian and Trent (eds.), Phallacies (2017), pp. 93–125.

Kuhlman, Erika, Of Little Comfort: War Widows, Fallen Soldiers, and the Remaking of the Nation after the Great War (New York: New York University Press, 2012).

Leese, Peter, Shell Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

Lerner, Paul, Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930 (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2003).

Linton, Simi, Susan Mello and John O’Neill, ‘Disability Studies: Expanding the Parameters of Diversity’, The Radical Teacher 47 (University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 4–10.

Meekosha, Helen and Russell Shuttleworth, ‘What’s so ‘critical’ about critical disability studies?’, Australian Journal of Human Rights 15, 1 (2009), pp. 47–75.

Muyinda, Herbert, ‘Negotiating Disability: Mobilization and Organization among Landmine Survivors in Late Twentieth-Century Northern Uganda’, in: Susan Burch and Michael Rembis (eds.), Disability Histories (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014).

Schalk, Sami, ‘Reevaluating the Supercrip’, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 10, 1 (2016), pp. 71–86.

Serlin, David, ‘Introduction’, in: Kathleen M. Brian and James W. Trent Jr (eds.), Phallacies: Historical Intersections of Disability and Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 1–22.

Shuttleworth, Russell, Nikki Wedgwood, and Nathan J. Wilson, ‘The Dilemma of Disabled Masculinity’, Men and Masculinities 15, 2 (2012), pp. 174–194.

Van Autreve, Lien, ‘Discourses of Masculinity during the First World War: An analysis of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and Mulk Raj Anand’s Across the Black Waters’ (Universiteit Gent: Unpublished MA Thesis, 2017).

Zboray, Ronald J. and Mary Saracino Zboray, ‘Recovering Disabled Veterans in Civil War Newspapers: Creating Heroic Disability’, Journalism History 45, 1 (2019), pp. 3–25.


About the Author

Natalie Tongue is currently a student in the MA Global History programme across the Freie Universität and Humboldt Universität in Berlin. Her undergraduate degree was in History at the University of Exeter. During this degree she undertook a study abroad year undertaken at the Ludwig Maximillians Universität in Munich within the American Institute. Her main research interests centre around histories of gender, particularly during revolutionary or violent histories. She is particularly interested in bodies and how certain identities are represented as deviant, with disability being one element of this. The main period of focus in her research is the Irish Revolution, with a focus on its anti-imperial nature, the Irish diaspora, gender and violence. This will be the basis of her MA thesis and pursuit for a PhD.


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Citation: Natalie Tongue, Towards a Global History of War, Disability and Gender, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 12.06.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/59619

 

 


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (June 12, 2025). Towards a Global History of War, Disability and Gender. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved July 9, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/143dp


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