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. As 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.

A 1997Choice Outstanding Book of the Year

Frontmatter Preface and Acknowledgments (page ix) Part 1.....POLITICIZING BODILY DIFFERENCES 1 Disability, Identity, and Representation: An Introduction (page 5) 2 Theorizing Disability (page 19) Part 2.....CONSTRUCTING DISABLED FIGURES: CULTURAL AND LITERARY SITES 3 The Cultural Work of American Freak Shows, 1835-1940 (page 55) 4 Benevolent Maternalism and the Disabled Women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps (page 81) 5 Disabled Women as Powerful Women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde (page 103) Conclusion: From Pathology to Identity (page 135) Notes (page 139) Bibliography (page 173) Index (page 191)

Inaugurates a new field of disability studies by framing disability as a minority discourse rather than a medical one. The book examines disabled figures in Uncle Tom's Cabin and in African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde as well as in the popular cultural ritual of the freak show.

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.

"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."--Provided by publisher