Understanding Disability - Interdisciplinary Critical Approaches

This edited volume brings together contributions on disability studies organized around two themes: literary and sociological aspects. The contributors include academics, disability activists, and researchers from within and outside the Indian periphery. While the book strengthens the disability discourse and contributes to building academic scholarship on this subject, it also promotes disability activism by giving space to both direct practitioners and persons with disabilities. The chapters discuss various analytical and literary aspects of the marginalization experienced by the disabled community and bring forth new and elaborate perspectives. It draws connections across multiple identities and includes personal narratives across nations, cultures and societies. It is an excellent research resource on disability studies in India for scholars and students in the area of humanities, education, law, sociology and social work, while at the same time also addressing the global context.


Ranu Uniyal is a bilingual poet.  She is Professor and Head Department of English, University of Lucknow. She has written four books of poetry- Across the Divide (2006), December Poems (2012), The Day We Went Strawberry Picking In Scarborough (2018) and Saeeda Ke Ghar (Hindi poems 2021).  She was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Hull, United Kingdom. Her areas of interest are women and literature, post colonial studies and disability studies. She has published extensively in India and abroad. Her major publications include: Women and Landscape: The Fiction of Margaret Drabble and Anita Desai (2000), Women in Indian Writing: From Difference to Diversity (2009), coedited Raja Rao's Kanthapura (2007), Reading Gandhi: Perspectives in the 21st Century'(2022), and 'Mahatma Gandhi: Essays on Life and Literature ' (2023). She coedited a Special issue on South Asian Women's Writing ZAA quarterly of Language, Literature and Culture, 2018.  She also works for people with special needs in Lucknow (PYSSUM.org).
Fatima Rizvi is Professor in the Department of English and Modern European languages, University of Lucknow. Her areas of academic interest include Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Translation Studies, and Urdu Studies. She translates Urdu and Hindi. Her research papers have been published in journals of national and international repute and anthologies of critical essays. She has published Beyond the stars and Other Stories (2021, Women Unlimited), a translation of Qurratulain Hyder's Sitaron se Aage (1947); is co-editing Understanding Disability: Interdisciplinary Critical Approaches for Springer and translating stories and essays for Summer Medley: A Qurratulain Hyder Miscellany for Women Unlimited. She was awarded the Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize for excellence in academic research (2018), and the Jawad Memorial Prize (2019), for Urdu - English translation.