Michael Gill is faculty member in women's, gender and sexuality studies at Grinnell College, USA. Cathy Schlund-Vials is Associate Professor in English and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut in the USA.

Contemporary human rights discourses problematically co-opt disabled bodies as 'evidence' of harms done under capitalism, war, and other forms of conflict, while humanitarian non-governmental organizations often use disabled bodies to generate resources for their humanitarian projects. It is the connection between civil rights and human rights, and the concomitant relationship between national and global, which foregrounds this book's contention that disability studies productively challenge such human rights paradigms, which troublingly eschew disability rights in favor of exclusionary humanitarianism.

Introduction, Michael Gill, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials; Chapter 1 The Promise of Human Rights for Disabled People and the Reality of Neoliberalism, Mark Sherry; Chapter 2 The New Humanitarianism, Maria Berghs; Chapter 3 Media, Disability, and Human Rights, Armineh Soorenian; Chapter 4 Volunteering as Tribute, Anna Mae Duane; Chapter 5 Structural and Cultural Rights in Australian Disability Employment Policy, Sarah Parker Harris, Randall Owen, Karen R. Fisher; Chapter 6 Disability in Humanitarian Emergencies in India, Vanmala Hiranandani; Chapter 7 Monitoring Disability, Tanya Titchkosky; Chapter 8 The Specter of Vulnerability and Disabled Bodies in Protest, Eunjung Kim; Chapter 9 Persons with Disabilities in International Humanitarian Law - Paternalism, Protectionism or Rights?, Janet E. Lord; Chapter 10 United Nations Policy and the Intersex Community, Ethan Levine; Chapter 11 HIV/AIDS, Disability and Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa, Lydia Apon Strehlau; Chapter 12 The Overrepresentation of Black Children in Special Education and the Human Right to Education, Jennifer Bronson; Chapter 13 "Becoming Disabled", Nirmala Erevelles;