Diversity is neither a fixed category nor an exclusively contemporary concern: its meanings and manifestations are historically contingent and subject to negotiation. Combining conceptual inquiry with case studies, this volume examines how diversity has been understood from the early modern period to the present and how forms of difference acquire social significance. Contributors draw on philosophy, art history, educational sciences, linguistics, literary and media studies. 
The first section rethinks theories and politics of difference. The second analyzes representations of dis/ability in art and literature from the early modern period to the nineteenth century. The third develops the innovative concept of ‘fragile participation’ as a framework for examining conditions of belonging and agency in contemporary education, literature and film. The final section explores luxury as a site where notions of difference, identity and value are negotiated from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first.
By tracing the production and transformation of diversity across historical periods and disciplinary contexts, the volume demonstrates how historical inquiry and contemporary case studies can inform one another. It thus offers new perspectives on diversity as both a conceptual framework and a historically variable social phenomenon.