Damned for their difference : the cultural construction of deaf people as "disabled" : a sociological history / Jan Branson and Don Miller.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I: The cultural construction of "the disables": a historical overview -- 1. The cosmological tyranny of science: from the new philosophy to eugenics -- 2. The domestication of difference: the classification, segregation, and institutionalization of unreason -- II: The cultural construction of deaf people as "disabled": a sociological history of discrimination -- 3. The new philosophy, sign language, and the search for the perfect language in the seventeenth century -- 4. The formalization of deaf education and the cultural construction of "the deaf" and "deafness" in the eighteenth century -- 5. The "great confinement" of deaf people through education in the nineteenth century -- 6. The alienation and individuation of deaf people: eugenics and pure oralism in the late-nineteenth century -- 7. Cages of reason--bureaucratization and the education of deaf people in the twentieth century: teacher training, therapy, and technology -- 8. The denial of deafness in the late-twentieth century: the surgical violence of medicine and the symbolic violence of mainstreaming -- 9. Ethno-nationalism and linguistic imperialism: the state and the limits of change in the battles for human rights for deaf people.