Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature

by Rosemarie Garland Thomson

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231183161
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2017
Edition description:	Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Lexile:	1680L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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).

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

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

Editorial Reviews

Extraordinary Bodies invites the medical humanities to imagine narratives of embodiment beyond pathology; to explore the intersection between art and science in support of transforming the world for the sake of greater civic inclusion.

Centre for Medical Humanities - Dr. Michelle S. Hite

Fascinating and theoretically rich... Extraordinary Bodies will... be viewed as one of [disability studies'] foundational texts.

Journal of American Studies - Anthony Hutchison

With this important work, Thomson not only redefines disability studies, but also makes a contribution to feminist, poststructuralist, and race theory and provides fresh rereadings of both canonical and non-canonical literary texts.

COLLEGE LITERATURE - Joyce Huff

[Thomson] digs deep and offers profound insights into the interrelationships among the theories, practices, and dominant ideologies of a particular historical period as they have had an impact on the position of disabled people.

SIGNS: JOURNAL OF WOMEN IN CULTURE & SOCIETY - Simi Linton

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

Drawing on her training as a literary critic and her personal experience as a person with a body different from the norm, Thomson investigates how representation attaches meanings to bodies, dropping into the deconstructionist discourse on race, gender, and sexuality, such characterizations as the cripple, the invalid, and the freak. She explores the politicizing of bodily differences; cultural and literary sites for constructing disable figures; benevolent maternalism and the disabled women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps; and disabled women as powerful women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

[A]n adventurous, sensible, passionate book that invites readers to rethink the ground-breaking work of theorists who have shaped academic discourse on marginality and the female body.

Journal of Social History - Catherine J. Kudlick

Extraordinary Bodies addresses a subject of great significance and topicality with originality and sophistication; it is, or should become, a seminal work in the emerging field of disability studies.

MELUS - G. Thomas Couser

A well-written and provocative beginning to a conversation about disability that is long overdue among scholars in literary and cultural studies.

From the Publisher