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dominantly medical approach, which saw dis/ability as a defect inherent to
an individual,10 to a more holistic understanding of dis/ability.11 Because
of the universal presence of dis/ability in society, dis/ability studies play
a crucial role in any sociocultural discourse. Paul K. Longmore and Lauri
Umansky therefore demand that ‘[l]ike gender, like race, disability must
become a standard analytical tool in the historian’s tool chest’.12 Only then
will it be possible to move beyond a monothematic history of dis/ability.
The subfield of dis/ability history, which has developed over the past
few decades, shares the premise that dis/ability is most accurately under-
stood as a multifactorial phenomenon. Yet whilst dis/ability studies and
dis/ability history share certain critical approaches and research questions,
they are distinctive disciplines for a simple reason: it is not generally advis-
able to apply modern dis/ability concepts and methodological tools directly
to premodern sources. The need to take sociocultural contexts into account
becomes even more pressing with regard to premodern sources, as there
is no fixed definition of dis/ability that applies in all historical contexts;
rather, the notion of dis/ability can be defined only in relation to a particu-
lar set of social, economic, cultural, temporal, and geographical parameters,
and is therefore given shape in countless expressions. Accordingly, one of
the basic research questions in dis/ability history more broadly is whether
premodern societies used a concept of dis/ability that was defined by
physical, mental, and psychological parameters.13
Yet our comparatively limited understanding of the various contextual
parameters outlined above means that it is often much more challenging
to define dis/ability in earlier historical contexts than in our contemporary
10 Shakespeare “Disability Rights and Wrongs,” 15–19, and “Disability Rights and Wrongs
Revisited,” 13.
11 The scope of this article does not allow for a detailed overview of the state of the art in the
field of dis/ability studies. For further reading, see Shakespeare, “Disability Rights and
Wrongs” and “Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited;” Watson, “Routledge Handbook;”
and Joshua R. Eyler, Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).
12 Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky. “Introduction: Disability History: from the
Margins to the Mainstream,” the new Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. by Paul
Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 15.
13 Bianca Frohne and Cordula Nolte, “In der Werkstatt: Das Forschungsprogramm ‘Dis/
ability History in der Vormoderne,’” Dis/ability History der vormoderne: ein Handbuch.
Premodern Dis/ability History: A Companion, ed. by Cordula Nolte, Bianca Frohne, Uta
Halle and Sonja Kerth (Affalterbach: Didymos, 2017), 21.
THE SILENCED TRAUMA IN THE Í sLEnDInGAsÖGUR