Preface to the fifth edition --
1.Introduction : disability, normality, and power / Lennard J. Davis --

Part I. Historical perspectives. --
2.Disability and the justification of inequality in American history / Douglas C. Baynton --
3."Heaven's special child" : the making of poster children / Paul K. Longmore --
4.Disabled upon arrival : the rhetorical construction of disability and race at Ellis Island / Jay Dolmage --

Part II. The politics of disability. --
5.Disability rights and selective abortion / Marsha Saxton --
6.Disability, democracy, and the new genetics / Michael Bérubé --
7.A mad fight : psychiatry and disability activism / Bradley Lewis --
8."The institution yet to come" : analyzing incarceration through a disability lens / Liat Ben-Moshe --

Part III. Stigma and illness. --
9.Selections from Stigma / Erving Goffman --
10.Stigma : an enigma demystified / Lerita M. Coleman-Brown --
11.Unhealthy disabled : treating chronic illnesses as disabilities / Susan Wendell --

Part IV. Theorizing disability. --
12.What's so "critical" about critical disability studies? / Helen Meekosha and Russell Shuttleworth --
13.The social model of disability / Tom Shakespeare --
14.Narrative prosthesis / David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder --
15. nervousness / Ato Quayson --
16.The unexceptional schizophrenic : a post-postmodern introduction / Catherine Prendergast --
17.Deaf studies in the 21st century : "deaf-gain" and the future of human diversity / H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Joseph J. Murray --
18.Aesthetic blindness : symbolism, realism, and reality / David Bolt --
19.Life with dead metaphors : impairment rhetoric in social justice praxis / Tanya Titchkosky --
20.At the same time, out of time : Ashley X / Alison Kafer --
21.Centering justice on dependency and recovering freedom / Eva Feder Kittay --

Part V. Identities and intersectionalities. --
22.Disability and the theory of complex embodiment : for identity politics in a new register / Tobin Siebers --
23.Defining mental disability / Margaret Price --
24.My body, my closet : invisible disability and the limits of coming out / Ellen Samuels --
25.Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory / Rosemarie Garland-Thomson --
26.Unspeakable offenses : untangling race and disability in discourses of intersectionality / Nirmala Erevelles and Andrea Minear --
27.Compulsory able-bodiedness and queer/disabled existence / Robert McRuer --
28.Is disability studies actually white disability studies? / Chris Bell --
29.Token of approval / Harilyn Rousso --

Part VI. Disability and culture. --
30.Sculpting body ideals : Alison Lapper pregnant and the public display of disability / Ann Millett-Gallant --
31.Blindness and visual culture : an eyewitness account / Georgina Kleege --
32.Disability, life narrative, and representation / G. Thomas Couser --
33.Why disability identity matters : from dramaturgy to casting in John Belluso's Pyretown / Carrie Sandahl --
34.The autistic victim : Of mice and men / Sonya Freeman Loftis --

Part VII. Fiction, memoir, and poetry. --
35.Stones in my pockets, stones in my heart / Eli Clare --
36.Unspeakable conversations / Harriet McBryde Johnson --
37."I am not one of the" and "cripple lullaby" / Cheryl Marie Wade --
38.Selections from Planet of the blind / Steve Kuusisto --
39."The magic wand" / Lynn Manning --
40."Biohack manifesto" / Jillian Weise