Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and LiteratureAs the first major critical study to examine literary and cultural representations of physical disability, Extraordinary Bodies situates disability as a social construction, shifting it from a property of bodies to a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do. Rosemarie Garland Thomson examines disabled figures in sentimental novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, and the popular cultural ritual of the freak show. Extraordinary Bodies inaugurates a new field of disability studies in the humanities by framing disability as a minority discourse, rather than a medical one, ultimately revising oppressive narratives of disability and revealing liberatory ones. |
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Contents
Disability Identity and Representation An Introduction | 5 |
Theorizing Disability | 19 |
CONSTRUCTING DISABLED FIGURES CULTURAL AND LITERARY SITES | 53 |
The Cultural Work of American Freak Shows 18351940 | 55 |
Benevolent Maternalism and the Disabled Women in Stowe Davis and Phelps | 81 |
Disabled Women as Powerful Women in Petry Morrison and Lorde | 103 |
From Pathology to Identity | 135 |
Notes | 139 |
| 173 | |
| 191 | |
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Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and ... Rosemarie Garland-Thomson No preview available - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
ability actual American appearance authority beauty become benevolent bodily body calls century chapter characters complex concept construct conventions created critical cultural Davis defined depend determined deviance difference disabled figure disabled women discourse discussion display distinction dominant economic embodied emerges equality examine example exhibition experience extraordinary extraordinary body female feminine Feminism feminist fiction forms freak show functions gender grotesque Hedges human ideal identity ideology imagined individual institutions interpretation liberal limits literary lives Lorde male marked maternal meaning middle-class mill Morrison's mother narrative natural needs nineteenth-century norm normate notion novels opposite ordinary person Phelps physical disability political position produced Quaker race relations relationship representation represents rhetorical role scientific sense sexuality slave social society spectacle standard status stigmatization Stowe Stowe's Street studies suggests texts theory tion traits University Press vulnerability woman womanhood writing York
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature ACLS Humanities E-Book History e-book project |
| Author | Rosemarie Garland Thomson |
| Contributors | ACLS Humanities E-Book (Organisation), American Council of Learned Societies, History E-Book Project |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | Columbia University Press, 1997 |
| ISBN | 0231105177, 9780231105170 |
| Length | 200 pages |
| Subjects | › › Social Science / Sociology / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |