Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature

Extraordinary Bodies is a cornerstone text of disability studies, establishing the field upon its publication in 1997. Framing disability as a minority discourse rather than a medical one, the book added depth to oppressive narratives and revealed novel, liberatory ones. Through her incisive readings of such texts as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson exposed the social forces driving representations of disability. She encouraged new ways of looking at texts and their depiction of the body and stretched the limits of what counted as a text, considering freak shows and other pop culture artifacts as reflections of community rites and fears. Garland-Thomson also elevated the status of African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde. Extraordinary Bodies laid the groundwork for an appreciation of disability culture and an inclusive new approach to the study of social marginalization.

ISBN-13: 9780231183178

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Publication Date: 03-07-2017

Pages: 224

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Age Range: 18 Years

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is professor of English at Emory University and the author of Staring: How We Look (2009) and the editor of Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (1996).

What People are Saying About This

Sander L. Gilman

Provides complex answers to the puzzle of American images of disabilities from the nineteenth century to the present. This is a solid, useful book which all readers interested in the relationship between society and culture must read.

— Sander L. Gilman, University of Chicago

Table of Contents

Preface to the Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Preface and Acknowledgments
I. Politicizing Bodily Differences
1. Disability, Identity, and Representation: An Introduction
2. Theorizing Disability
II. Constructing Disabled Figures: Cultural and Literary Sites
3. The Cultural Work of American Freak Shows, 1835-1940
4. Benevolent Maternalism and the Disabled Women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps
5. Disabled Women as Powerful Women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde
Conclusion: From Pathology to Identity
Notes
Bibliography
Index Show More